Redheads Do It In Elevator Shafts

Um, Hey There!

2009-11-04T10:36:00.015-06:00

It's been a while, hasn't it? Things have been crazy for me, and I've been slacky on my posting. I'm going to at least try to get a couple of posts in a week, now that things are slowing down a little.

Since today is Wednesday, I'm going to continue with my last Deadpool post and talk about Chapter 2 of Daredevil/Deadpool Annual '97.

If you don't remember where we last left off, Deadpool & Daredevil had teamed up to hunt down Typhoid Mary, each with their own reasons. Daredevil wanted to bring her in and get her the help she needed, and Deadpool wanted to find her because she owed him money. In the last page of the book, after they had briefly separated to find her, Daredevil came to 'Pool's rescue after Mary stabbed him. And that brings us to Chapter 2.

This section opens with Deadpool & Daredevil monitoring the Viper Club. Turns out that Mary is gunning for the mob, and they've all holed up inside together, which brings us to one of the best moments I've seen today: a Tick reference from Deadpool:

(Isn't that awesome?)

The story then cuts to a restaurant in the Village where the two sidekicks, Foggy Nelson & Weasel, are pigging out on pizza. Weasel starts asking Foggy whether Daredevil makes him clean his weapons or hack into CIA computers, but it turns out that Foggy and old Horn Head just hang out together. No forced labor here; they're just buds. That depresses Weasel, and he asks if Daredevil could use another pal. Poor guy. . .

Back to the boys. DD & DP crash in through the skylight and begin to take on all the gangsters there. DD finds his senses overwhelmed by the sheer number of people, and old Wade starts to shoot all the baddies, but Daredevil stops him and tells him not to kill anyone. Of course, Wade doesn't like that and whines about it a bit, but saves Daredevil's life in the meanwhile.

Upstairs, the mob bosses are relishing in the mayhem below via a wall of televisions. However, their entertainment is to be short lived. Mary shows up to enact her vendetta against them.

Back downstairs, the boys have taken care of the mob and are taking part in a little witty banter.

Daredevil rushes upstairs to deal with Mary, but she has anticipated him and hits him hard by yelling, "Hello, baby!" into a microphone. The amplification from the club's huge speakers take down Daredevil & overwhelm his senses, leaving him open for Mary's attack. She manages to get in quite a few hits before Daredevil begins rallying, but just as he's planning a punch to take her down, Deadpool grabs his fist and prevents him from following through.

We get another break from the drama by cutting back to Foggy & Weasel. This page is just too cute not to share, so here it is:

And we switch focus once more. Deadpool knocks Daredevil down with a hard fist to the jaw, and then poses with Mary in what shouldn't be one of the hottest comic panels I've ever seen, but it is:

(Unf!)

Mary takes Deadpool's advice to heart and starts wailing in on Daredevil, but amidst all her attacks, she reveals a bit of vital backstory. It seems that when Deadpool knocked her out of a window in a past meeting, the fall released a concealed memory of Mary's, a memory involving Daredevil:

She tries to blame her splitting into multiple personalities on Daredevil, but Matt just won't take it. He's lived with massive guilt all these years, thinking he killed the girl he accidentally knocked out of the window, and now he's released of that. He tells Mary that he refuses to accept responsibility for the person she became, and she tries to skewer him with her kitana in response.

They battle back and forth with Daredevil lecturing her all the while (and while I understand where he's coming from, I really kind of think he's being a bit heavy handed in his approach):

Deadpool scoops Mary up in his arms and tells Daredevil that this his goal all the while, to get the two of them together, to make Mary confront her demons head-on to cause a breakthrough. Daredevil tells Deadpool that he's not about to let him walk out with her, and Wade replies with one of the most heartbreaking speeches I've ever seen in his book:

Daredevil has a little bit of soul searching while he stands on the roof, watching the police & ambulances deal with the mess in the club. He feels that he's finally found some peace since he now knows that he's not a killer.

And it wouldn't be a Deadpool book if it didn't end with a little levity. Foggy wakes up the next morning to find that Weasel has skedaddled, leaving only a note on the TV which says that he had a great time and that Foggy's poker tab is paid in full. Foggy can't figure out what he lost until he notices that Deuce, his dog (and former guide dog for Matt), is missing.

Cut to Deadpool recapping events for Blind Al. All in all, he thinks his little escapade with Typhoid Mary was a good thing, that he made a little progress with her, and he decides that the "quasi-heroic stuff isn't an exact science, you know. . . but it's a good thing." (cue the awwws from the peanut gallery). Al wants to know where the present Wade promised her is, and he hands it over:

It was nice to revisit this book. I don't remember caring for it much when I got it when it first came out, but I enjoyed it much more this time. And an interesting little tidbit is the title of the issue, "Whomsoever Fights Monsters. . .". It's a nice little variation on the classic quote, "Those who fight monsters should take care that in the process, they do not become monsters." I really think that quote kind of sums up Wade at this point in his life. He's trying hard to do a little good, and he's not afraid to go into that dark abyss, but he's standing on the tip of the sword. One little push could send him either way. As much as I love the jocular Deadpool, I do wish we'd get a little more of the conflicted Deadpool we see in this issue. What can I say? I dig the angst.

I'm not sure if my next post will be tomorrow or a couple of days from now, but I'm thinking of something to cover. I might do a post that dips a little bit into the mind of Alan Moore, something that touches on the wickedest, trippiest and grossest scenes from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen & Lost Girls. We'll see. That will definitely be a post eventually, though.

The Nearness of You

2009-10-15T08:59:00.005-05:00

Sorry, no clever use of quotes for today's post, just the title of today's topic. Today, I want to talk about one of the most brilliant issues of a comic ever, Astro City 1/2, "The Nearness of You." This was given away as a freebie with Wizard Magazine back in 1996 or 1997 (I can't remember which year for certain), and it was written by Kurt Busiek. It is hands down one of the most elegant books I've ever read, and I'm going to show you a little bit of that.

First off, this book deals with the subject of retcons. For those not familiar with the term, a retcon means "retroactive continuity"; that is, a change in a comic's storyline that affects events that have already happened. One of the most argued retcons in recent memory would be the Spider-Man storyline, "One More Day," wherein a deal was made with Mephisto (Marvel's resident devil) to erase Peter Parker & Mary Jane's marriage in order to save the life of Peter's Aunt May. These retcons can be big or small, and sometimes, the littlest ones can have a greater impact than expected, as we'll see in this story.

When the story opens, we see a man named Michael dreaming about a beautiful woman. He knows everything about her, but yet he knows that he never met her.
His "memories" and daydreams of her start impacting his life: his boss threatens to fire him because he messes up, a date gets angry with him for seeming so distant. He starts wondering if he's going insane because he just cannot get this mystery woman out of his mind.

He calls all his family and friends to see if they remember her, but not a one of them does. Fed up with his inability to sleep, he starts taking sleeping pills; unfortunately, they don't help him for very long.

One night, he starts to take extra sleeping pills, just so he can forget her, when he has an unexpected visitor: the Hanged Man. The Hanged Man is the guardian of Shadow Hill and is closely related to all supernatural events in the city. He shows Michael a series of events from Astro City's past.

A villain called Time-Keeper tried to rob a bank in 1943 but was foiled by superheroes. In his rage, Time-Keeper created a device that allowed him to alter the time stream; Eterneon, Lord of Time, tries to stop him, but to no avail. Time-Keeper starts altering time, but it gets out of his control and time starts to fragment and people and even Astro City start disappearing. Michael doesn't see every aspect of this event and of the battle that raged to heal the time stream; he does see that the heroes managed to save the day.

Through the Hanged Man's visions of the past, Michael comes to realize that his mystery woman was a real person who died in the time maelstrom. Hanged Man tells him that she was his wife and that the reconstruction of the time line was not exact. Through the reconstruction, her grandparents wound up never meeting because a hero and his villains fought on a Sunday instead of a Monday. One little change caused her to never be born. He tells Michael that it's beyond his powers to bring her back, but that he can make it so Michael doesn't remember her any more.

Like I said, this is hands down one of the most beautiful and moving stories of any comic I have ever read. The imagery of the mystery woman is so compelling, and Michael's choice not to forget her breaks my heart every time. If you can find it, I completely endorse getting it, as I do all of the main Astro City title (not so much Dark Age, but it's still a good read). I'm about to start a reread of Astro City, so you'll be seeing more of it here.

And that's it for today. I apologize for the short post, but I'm under the weather. Hopefully, there will be more in tomorrow's post.

"Power to the people! Right on. Dig it."

2009-10-14T14:15:00.002-05:00

Ah, Deadpool. Is there anything you can't make funny? Yep, today's title comes from the Merc with a Mouth, and it's from today's book, Daredevil/Deadpool Annual '97, written by Joe Kelly with art by Bernard Chang & Jon Holdredge. Since this book is broken up into two chapters, I'm going to cover each chapter in a separate post, so here we go with Chapter 1.

Rather than try to sum up the backstory of Deadpool, Daredevil & Typhoid Mary, I'm just going to post the ever-so-helpful "Previously In. . ." page.

So, the book opens with three levels of panels. The top level is Deadpool and Blind Al, the middle layer is a bunch of underworld leaders, and the bottom panel is a doctor at an insane asylum. Through the three sections, we learn that Typhoid Mary has broken out of the insane asylum and that two of her personalities have been healed, leaving only the crazy Mary one. Daredevil comes to the asylum looking for information on her as he's trying to bring her back to the asylum. The underworld bosses are laughing about her escape and her recent kills until they realize, hey, they could be next on her list! And, so that leaves us with the 'pool panels. Blind Al is trying to talk him out of going after Mary, but he doesn't listen. He does leave Al with a little present before he goes.

The next couple of pages are Daredevil reminiscing about Mary while he investigates her latest kills, her psych and his staff. From there, we cut into one of the funniest Deadpool scenes ever:

And we cut perspectives yet again. This time, we get a page of Typhoid Mary in all her insane glory. She's working on the judge who put her into the insane asylum while pontificating on madness and destiny before she finally kills him at the end of the scene.

The next day, a strangely loud and overbearing (and familiarly wisecracking) delivery boy is attempting to deliver a bundle of balloons to Foggy Nelson, Matt Murdock's (the alter-ego of Daredevil) law partner. He makes a huge fuss, even elbows a security guard in the gut, until finally Foggy appears.

(I love how his little smiley face buttons change.)

During all the hullabaloo, Matt finally shows up, and his heightened senses immediately tells him something's not right. The delivery boy, dragging Foggy behind him, passes by Matt, and via his abilities, he sees it's Deadpool using a holographic projector to change his image. Deadpool leaps out of a window with Foggy, but he uses a rope to reach the top of the building. He was expecting his buddy Weasel to be waiting for him, but he gets a little surprise instead in the form of Daredevil.

Daredevil warns Wade that Mary is a very dangerous woman, which he does realize, but he also tells DD that she wasn't born that way, that she was manufactured into the monster she is and that the monsters have to stick together. Daredevil decides to allow Deadpool to follow him as he captures Mary, but he warns DP not to interfere when they find her.

Meanwhile, the two sidekicks (Foggy & Weasel) make an accord and decide to go out and get some food while they wait for the guys to finish.

Back to the guys.

Deadpool goes searching for Mary up in the arboretum (calling out to her like Pepe Le Pew), and it soon proves to be a big mistake. Mary quickly finds him and holds him at sword-point.

Downstairs, Daredevil finds the dead body of the judge, and his inner warnings go off when he hears water running from a tap. Mary turned it on to help obscure her discussion with and advances on Deadpool (and boy does she ever make advances!). Wade tries to resist and argues with Mary. Turns out he let her out to take out Daredevil, but he does not like how she's been killing civilians along the say. She promises not to take out any more civilians, but she leaves Wade with "a little something to help you remember your lines. . ."

*dramatic musical sting* Gasp! What will happen now? Will Wade manage to heal his wound? Will Mary live to kill again? Will Daredevil get the stick out of his ass and stop being so damn depressing? Tune in next week for Part 2!

Being a hero is about the shortest lived profession on earth.

2009-10-13T09:55:00.019-05:00

Today's title comes from the great Will Rogers, and it's a fitting summation of the comic we're going to go through, Superman: Kal. This Elseworlds book came out in 1995 and was written by Dave Gibbons (yes, the same Dave Gibbons who did the art for Watchmen) with art by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez.

As you know if you've been following my blog, I have a lot of affinity for the Elseworld books, and this one (with the possible exception of the pirate Batman story I shared on Talk Like a Pirate Day) is my favorite. My poor copy is so worn from all the rereads it has had over the years. I've never been a huge Superman fan, but I love this one because it kind of gives us the better parts of Superman (his origin, the powers) without the not-so-good parts (the Boy Scout, the overwhelming patriotism). So, here we go!

The story is told as a flashback from one character to another after the day's work is done & they are waiting for dinner to finish cooking; we won't find out who these people are until the end. The story opens with a dynamic page showing how Kal came to be on Earth:

Like in our time, the ship lands in a farmer's field except that it lands in medieval England where it's found by John and his wife (alas, poor Martha doesn't get a name in this book). They take the baby in, though John has great reservations. He feels it's all too much like witchcraft, and he buries the ship in his field so no one will find it and burn him at the stake for it.

The couple soon see that the child is not quite of this world as he never gets the common ailments and his skin remains unmarked by pox; not only that, but he's incredibly strong. Still fearful of a fiery death, John tells the boy to hide his powers.

Kal reaches his teenage years with little troubles until one particular Michaelmas Eve when Oll the blacksmith and his son, Jamie (this world's Jimmy Olson), come for their yearly call to shoe John's horse.

The two boys go out into the fields to play when they run into a big problem: the bull has escaped and runs straight for them. Kal uses his vast strength to send the bull up into the tree they're standing by. Oll had been discussing with John taking on Kal as an apprentice, and this clenches it for him. Oddly, Oll finds nothing strange in a young boy being able to put a bull into a tree; he just sees a strong lad who can help with his forge. John protests losing Kal as a farmhand, but Oll promises to make it worth his while and to allow Kal to stay through Yuletide so that the farm can be put into shape.

And so, young Kal comes to live with Oll and his family in the castle town of Lexford. He quickly gets introduced to Baron Luthor's way of ruling when his guards literally (and drunkenly) bump into Kal as he tries to unload wood from the wagon.

But aside from that, Kal soon finds life in Lextown to be pretty pleasant. He fits in well with Oll's family, and his strength is put into good use at the forge. Oh, and the ladies of Lextown find him rather attractive.

The next summer, an emmisary from Baron Luthor decrees that a tournament and joust will be held at Midsummer's Fair in honor of Lady Loisse's sixteenth birthday. Jamie tells Kal that Loisse is the daughter of their murdered protector, Lord Layne, and is being held captive by Luthor. The girls of town and Jamie urge Kal to enter the contests of strength, but he is apprehensive, remembering how his father told him to hide his abilities.

Midsummer comes, and so does Cupid: Kal immediately falls in love with Loisse at first sight. And we finally see Lord Luthor. His guards try to get the crowd to give him three cheers, but they refuse, and he responds, "The rabble don't have to like me. . . they just have to fear me." Oooh. . . We see that Loisse cannot stand Luthor but that he wishes to marry her now that she's of age (you'd think something like that wouldn't matter to a villain like him).

So, the tournement begins. Luthor's men win every event (the only knights in the realm are actually squires; Luthor had all of Lord Layne's men murdered when he took over). Kal and friends enjoy watching the matches, but one little announcement that Lady Loisse will give a prize to the winner of the feats of strength drives Kal forward into the fray.

He easily wins every match, earning Luthor's ire and the crowd's adoration. Luthor sends in Ulf, one of his best men, to wrestle Kal with the orders to stop him. Ulf reveals a hidden spike in his wristband that is poisoned with snake venom and drives it into Kal's chest, but the spike just turns when it hits his flesh, and Kal bests Ulf, winning the tournament. The audience starts to chant Kal's name as he approaches Lady Loisse for his prize (a satchel of money tied with her ribbon), and she seems to fall in love with him, tool. Luthor gets pissed off at the mooney eyes they're making at each other, and Kal seems to grow ill at his approach. Perhaps it's the strange green stone Luthor wears around his neck. Luthor takes the moment of weakness to kick Kal back to the crowd, and Oll and family take Kal back home.

He finds new interest in life post-meeting Loisse. He doesn't even keep his prize money; he splits it between John & Oll and only keeps her ribbon for himself. Life goes on as normal until he receives a message from one of Loisse's ladies to meet him in the woods. This is one of my favorite little scenes, largely because of the art. I've never seen Lois in any universe looking more beautiful than she does here, and I love the little variation on the trope of Superman & Lois flying together.

Meanwhile, Luthor and his men run into a little something unexpected on their hunt: the dogs find the ship that brought Kal to Earth. He orders his men to fetch him the farmer that owns the land, and they bring forth John and Luthor begins questioning him.

John tells Luthor that the craft fell from the sky, and, of course, Luthor doesn't really believe him, but one of his men points out that the gem Luthor wears around his neck fell from the sky, too. The men marvel over how hard the metal is, and John's wife manages to save the day by mentioning that her son works as a blacksmith and they could make Luthor a suit of armor from the metal. Luthor orders John to clean the object up and have it ready for them to collect at dawn.

The next morning, Luthor and his men bring the object to Oll's blacksmith shop and order him to make a suit of armor from it.

Oll has no luck in even putting a scratch on the ship. Kal recovers from his weakness and attempts to break apart the metal. Oll and Jamie have to get the forge blazing hot for Kal to work on it, but the heat doesn't seem to affect him; in fact, heat almost seems to come out of his eyes, and the metal begins to bend under his hammer.

After a number of days, Oll and his young apprentice appear before Luthor with the suit of armor, and Luthor immediately orders the suit to be placed upon him. Once armored up, he orders one of his guards to strike him, but his sword shatters upon impact.

He then tosses Kal an ax and orders him to take a turn at attacking him, but the weakness has hit Kal once more. Loisse pleads on his behalf, telling Luthor that Oll & Kal deserve rewards, not blows. Luthor tells Oll to name his price, but Oll demurs, insisting that Kal did all the work, so Luthor asks him what he wishes. He replies that the only thing he desires is the hand of Loisse in marriage. Luthor rages, but Loisse rushes forward and accepts. Since this all happened in front of the court, Luthor cannot go back on his word, so the pair are married.

The celebrations are bright and cheerful. John and his wife rejoice at their son's fortune, Jamie parties with a couple of young ladies, and Oll and his wife dance, his wife telling him to be happy for Kal (Oll's a little depressed that he lost a great apprentice). However, the celebrations are brief: at midnight, the bells toll and Luthor appears on the scene.

Luthor invokes the droit de seigneur, the right that a manor lord has to take any new bride to his bed on her wedding night. Kal tries to protect Loisse, but the gemstone affects him once more, and Luthor sweeps Loisse onto his horse and heads back to his castle.

The next scene is one of the most heartbreaking I've ever seen in any book. Luthor tries to force himself on Loisse, insisting that all her protestations hide the love she feels for him, but she tries to fight him off, bloodying his face in the process. That goes too far for him, and he replies in kind. Just a heads up that these panels are rough and triggering but also very powerful, which is why I'm sharing them.

Back at Oll's home, Kal has begun to come out of his stupor, and his first thought is for Loisse. Just as he begins to rise to go searching for her, the door is kicked in by a group of Luthor's men. They have come to arrest Kal. He fights back, asking repeatedly where Loisse is. Alas, he soon receives his answer, but not from them. One of her ladies-in-waiting has arrived to tell Kal of Loisse's murder. We get one little cliched panel:

And so Kal begins a one-man war against Luthor. Well, not completely one-manned as the villagers have had enough and join in to revolt against Luthor. His men try to hold the castle, but Kal makes easy work of the drawbridge and portcullis. He no longer holds back his inhuman strength.

The men feel that their fighting against witchcraft, and some of them flee, but a group of those who remain pour down a pot of molten lead onto Kal. Other than burning off his clothing, it has no effect on him, and he flies up into Luthor's tower.

The few remaining guards scatter at this sight, and Luthor is left alone to deal with Kal. Kal initially gets the upper hand, but the strange stone around Luthor's neck begins to impact him, and Luthor quickly realizes that. He dives at Kal, driving the stone into his chest, but Kal's sword manages to penetrate Luthor's impenetrable armor.

And so we see that the narrator has been Jamie. He wraps up the story by telling us that Kal wasn't dead when they reached him, but his wound was mortal. He survived long enough for one of Loisse's ladies-in-waiting to tell him that they had recovered her body and buried it in Lake Lexford properly. His final request was to be buried aside of her in the lake, and so they buried him in the strange armor there.

In the final pages, we see that the story has been told to a young boy. He asks what happened to the sword, and Jamie tells him that Kal put it somewhere safe, in the hopes that it might serve someone else in need one day. Jamie tells the lad to finish his dinner:

When I reread this today, I was actually a little surprised by the final pages because when I saw the boy, I was expecting the boy to be Arthur. Gibbons nicely subverted that trope with his use of Merlin instead.

Okay, gotta take care of a little business here before we go: you've noticed I've not been real regular with my posting, and I apologize for that. Things have been a little crazy and stressful for me in real life, and I was finding myself getting stressed out by feeling I had to make a post every day here, and that's not what this blog is for. I'm still going to try and make a post every day (at least Mon-Fri), but I may not stick to the planned schedule. For instance, it's kind of limiting having Wednesday be Deadpool day. I mean, you know I love that crazy man, but being honest, there's not a ton of Deadpool material out there, and I haven't read all of it that is there.

So, I may deviate from the Mutant Monday, Wacky Wade Wednesday & Fables Friday set up in order to bring you a post every day. I'll still try to bring you something from those areas at least once a month, but you're going to see a little more variety here, hopefully. I'd like to do a little Bone soon, some Astro City, maybe even (if I feel daring enough) a smidgeon of Lost Girls. Hopefully, this will expose you guys to some books you haven't heard of and shine a little light on some lost gems.

"I'm a doctor, dammit, not the head of security!"

2009-10-12T09:27:00.012-05:00

Today's title comes from the book I'm going to cover today, 1996's Star Trek/X-Men. This book came out as part of Star Trek's 30th anniversary, and it was written by Scott Lobdell with art by Marc Silvestri (it had about half a dozen inkers, so I'm not gonna list them all out). I remember loving this book when it came out, so I can't wait to get this reread on and see if it's as good as I remember (or at least as fun).

We open on the bridge of the Enterprise with Kirk, Spock & McCoy discussing a space anomaly the Enterprise has encountered. Kirk's Captain Log tells us that they are at Delta Vega, a planet the Enterprise has been to before, a place that brought a lot of pain to Kirk. This happened in the Star Trek episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before," the series second pilot, when the Enterprise was called to Delta Vega and Kirk's best friend, Gary Mitchell, was transformed into a god-like being.

The Enterprise continues monitoring the anomaly when Uhura isolates a signal emanating from the anomaly. It's a distress signal, but she can't translate it, and neither can the Universal Translator. Suddenly, an odd-looking spaceship emerges from the anomaly. Kirk tries to have Scotty get the ship in their tractor beam, but before Scotty can act, the ship gets destroyed in the anomaly's wake.

Spock informs Kirk that the Enterprise's sensors had been able to scan the other ship before it exploded. There were seven near-human life forms on board, but before Kirk can fully digest whatever "near-human" means, a gigantic ship uncloaks right in front of the Enterprise and fires a projectile at them. The projectile stops 100 kilometers from the Enterprise, and the crew is surprised to see it's a being, and not just any being: it's Gladiator from the Shi'ar Imperial Guard.

He warns the Enterprise that he has claimed the planet for the Shi'ar Empire (of course, Kirk marvels how he's able to talk in space), and as a parting warning, Gladiator punches the ship. Yes, you read that right. He punches the Enterprise, damaging the shields.

We then get to see that someone has been spying on the Enterprise crew via the ducts: Wolverine. Yep, those seven life forms on that ship that exploded are the X-Men, and they managed to teleport off. Unfortunately, they were aiming for Deathbird's ship (Deathbird is the sister of Shi'ar Empress Lilandra) & ended up on the Enterprise by accident.

Beast soon figures out that somehow, the X-Men got transported into the future when they got sent through the spatial anomaly. However, they can't deal with that mystery at the moment. Gambit was injured during the teleportation, and the team needs to find the medical center of the ship. Jean uses her telepathic powers to try and find a way off of the ship so they can escape without being detected, but Spock senses her somehow, and he leaves the bridge to check up on his hunch.

Meanwhile, Storm & Beast manage to get Gambit to sickbay (via those ever-so-useful air ducts) where they run into Dr. McCoy. Dr McCoy, meet Dr. McCoy. This is one of the niftiest little scenes in the book, and one of my favorites.

Back with the rest of the team, they're headed through the ship, trying to reach the shuttlebay. Their plan is to steal a shuttle craft & take it down to the problem, but they run in to a little problem in the form of Spock. Wolverine being Wolverine, he attempts to attack Spock, but Spock brings him down promptly with a Vulcan nerve pinch. Doesn't work, though. Wolvie's healing factor brings him right back, and he pops his claws while demanding Spock take them to his leader.

The action now cuts to Deathbird speaking with Gladiator & her vizier. We learn that she has brought the ship to the anomaly because she believes that the energy emanating from it could allow her to conquer the universe. Gladiator tells her that their sensors have found a humanoid life form on the planet (which is supposed to be lifeless), and she makes plans to go down and visit it.

We now get our first glimpse of Delta Vega. Somehow, the planet is being transformed; the source of this transformation is Proteus, long-time X-Men villain. He has combined his essence with that of Gary Mitchell (Kirk's dead friend), and their two immense powers have been combined.

Back aboard the Enterprise, the two teams are having a meeting in the ready room when Chekhov informs them that the rift is expanding again. Kirk tells Spock to get a landing party ready to head down to the planet and see what's going on down there. The rest of the teams depart, leaving Kirk alone with Jean Grey.

Of course, Kirk being Kirk, he tries to hit on Jean, but she quickly puts him in his place.

The two teams beam down to the planet where they find what appears to be a Scottish village. Little Proteus has been a busy villain! And he takes no time at all to show himself. Proteus/Gary have joined forces with Deathbird and the Imperial Guard. She's promised him that she'll take him along on her ship so he's free to conquer the universe as he desires. He reveals that Proteus was searching for a body to contain his essence, one that wouldn't burn out because of his powers, and he was attracted to the psionic rift. He found Gary, and when they bonded, they found that they could control the rift & affect changes to reality.

Now here is where things really start getting cracky. Spock, who remained on the ship with the Drs. McCoy, informs Kirk that the rift is expanding erratically. Bishop tells Kirk that his mutant ability enables him to rechannel vast amounts of energy, so Kirk has him beamed back aboard the Enterprise to help out.

Beast & Spock are putting their vast intellects together to solve the issue.

Back on the planet, Proteus/Gary betrays Deathbird, and the heroes attempt to attack him, even though they know it's not going to do any good. Kirk asks Jean to use her psy powers so he can talk to Gary. Gary is very, very angry at Kirk still because Kirk killed him when his powers threatened to overtake them all. Kirk tries to reason with him, to explain that he acted out of justified fear. Jean seems to reach Gary by telling him that he still has humanity in him and he knows what he has to do.

The fight is continuing, but Proteus is pretty much thrashing them. Spock contacts the landing party and tells them that they're going to attempt to destroy the rift (resulting in a cold-blooded Vulcan comment from Bones). Gary in Proteus starts to protest as they begin their siphoning of the energy rift, and Jean, Cyclops & Kirk plead with him.

Bishop, riding on the ship's nacelle barrel, refocuses the rift's energy through the phaser banks & fires it back into the rift, causing it to contract upon itself. Of course, they never explain how Bishop, a human (he may be a mutant, but he's still human) can breath in space, but let's leave that aside, shall we?

With everything a success, it's just time now to clean up. There's nothing left of Gary, and we get a "He's dead, Jim" from Bones as a result. The Imperial Guard almost starts to attack, but Cyclops uses his authority from Lilandra to commandeer their craft. Deathbird immediately surrenders, but as she says, "only because there is nothing left for us here."

The X-Men give the Enterprise crew a hurried goodbye (they have to leave before the rift completely closes). Cyclops tells Kirk that seeing his crew has given him hope for the future (awwww), and Kirk returns the favor by telling Cyc that the sacrifices people like the X-Men have made is why they've made it this far as a race (double awwwww). The X-Men depart on the Shi'ar ship, and things go back to normal for the Enterprise. Bones & Spock go back to their regular bickering, which Kirk cuts off. The issue ends with Kirk telling Sulu to bring the ship out of orbit "to the future, Mr. Sulu. To the future."

All in all, it's still a good read. Memory had kind of made it a little better than the reread proved it to be, and it wasn't quite as funny as I had remembered it, either. Still, it's a fun book, and if you can find it for cheap, I'd recommend it just for the sheer crack.

2009-10-05T16:22:00.003-05:00

Hey there. I know you're probably tired of me giving you these little update posts with no real posts, but I have to beg your indulgence for one more day. I had hoped to get my Toy Story/Underrated Disney post up today, but I'm not feeling well today, but it WILL be up tomorrow. I've got it about half-way finished, so tomorrow, I hope you enjoy it. I'm going to try to get this puppy back on the rails after that and, hopefully, there will be no more big delays in posting. Again, I'm really sorry.

"You are a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity."

2009-10-05T06:44:00.021-05:00

Today's title comes from Buzz Lightyear in the first Toy Story movie. I apologize for being tardy with this post, but here it is! In this post, I'm going to give my thoughts on the Toy Story 3D Double Feature, and then I'm going to give my Top 5 Underrated Disney Animated Films.

Toy Story 3D Double Feature

In 1995, Pixar Animation Studios came out with their first feature film, Toy Story, and it was a game-changing film. This was the first fully computer animated feature film release, shepherding in Pixar as a major player in the animated film arena.

I've always considered to be Toy Story 2 to be the superior film (and I still think it is, if maybe by a slighter margin), but what surprised me on this viewing was how well the original Toy Story stood up and how much it made me laugh. Oh, and there was a big surprise for me in the opening credits: I never realized Joss Whedon worked on the screenplay of this film! I'd love to know where he lent his hand; I have a feeling he came up with some of the lines I love so much, like the one in my title.

What you're probably wondering is how is the 3D? Overall, it's nice. It doesn't get mind bending until the second film; in the first film, the 3-D is mainly used like it was in Up, a tool accentuate the setting. It's not a 3-D experience like you would get in Muppet Vision 3-D at Disney World, where things are popping off the screen at you.

Now, the shining moment of the 3-D came in the opening of Toy Story 2. I was really anticipating this scene for a couple of reasons: 1) It's one of my favorite scenes ever and 2) I had a feeling it would really pop with the 3-D, and boy did it ever! The stars that appear just look so lush and deep; you feel like you're going to fall into them, the title sequences explode in, and, finally, Buzz Lightyear zooms in, and you follow him through his little adventure of breaking into Zurg's castle. It's a stellar moment (no pun intended), and I'd almost say that it's worth the price of admission for this scene alone.

One thing that I liked about this viewing was that I noticed a few things that I hadn't noticed before. If you remember the outtakes for Toy Story 2, there's one with Flik & Heimlich from A Bug's Life talking about how excited they are to be making another film, and then Buzz chops off the branch they're on, sending them flying. Pay attention to that scene in the actual film, when Buzz is chopping a path through the brush, and you'll actually see Heimlich! That tickled me so much.

And, finally, just a little impression of the overall experience. Disney did a good job packaging the whole thing. It felt at times like I was at Disney World with the way there was a pre-show and intermission themed to the movies. It was a wonderful little touch, and I would definitely recommend going to this while you still can if you enjoyed either of the Toy Story films. At the moment, it will be playing in theaters for another week and a half (I'm not sure if Disney might extend the run if it's a success).

My Top 5 Underrated Animated Disney Films

So, although I haven't gone too much into it yet on this blog, if you know me from Twitter or Livejournal, you probably know that I'm a big Disney fan. I grew up watching all of the films my parents could get their hands on (our poor copy of Mary Poppins on disc got so much play!), and I unashamedly still love to watch their films.

There are some films that seem to be universally loved by all (Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty), but there are a lot of them that either get overlooked or are just plain bashed for one reason or another. Now, I won't say that I love every single Disney film out there because it's not true, but I can usually find something of merit in their films. And so, I'm going to give you my underrated films and the reasons why I love them, and hopefully, you'll seek them out and give them a try. Again, these are in no particular numerical order; they're just however they popped into my mind. By the way, I apologize for my poor abilities to discuss the art-side of the films. I'm not trained as an artist in any way, but I can recognize unique art-styles and techniques when I see them. I hope I'm able to explain my view of them clearly enough. Please let me know if I'm way off in my interpretations, though!

5) Robin Hood (1973)

This one may be a little tainted by the memories of childhood, but I still think there is a lot of good to be found in this film. Robin Hood is a retelling of the classic tale using anthropomorphic animals for the characters (as you can see in the poster above).

Now, this one gets much maligned because it was one of the films pushed out after Walt's death, and it also features a lot of recycled animation (for example there was a dance sequence used that was traced from Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs, and another dance sequence between Robin & Maid Marian was lifted from The Aristocats), but its strength lies in the voice work.

Granted, some of the voice work is a little bit jarring (a Sheriff of Nottingham with a deep-Southern accent?); however, I feel that the work of Brian Bedford as Robin and especially Peter Ustinov as Prince John elevate the film. Honestly, I've still never quite felt so much interest in a Robin as in this Robin Hood (no, I'm not a furry); the scene where he confesses his love for Marian after he's been captured at the archery contest still makes my heart clench a bit.

And Ustinov's PJ. . . he's still one of my all-time favorite Disney villains, and he never fails to make me laugh. He's so delightfully over the top (watch him freak out any of the times Robin steals from him or elude him, not to mention his thumb sucking and crying out for his Mommy), but he also has a deep edge of menace to him. Ustinov successfully melds the two sides of Prince John to make a memorable animated villain.

Oh, and no discussion of this film could be complete without mentioning the film's soundtrack by country/folksinger Roger Miller. If you were around in the earlier days of the internet, say 1997, you're probably more familiar with him than you may like: his Whistle Stop song from Robin Hood was used as the music for the Hamster Dance video.

The rest of the songs, thankfully, were a bit less head-smashing inducing (and, of course, that song was sped up for the video; the song itself was only used in the opening credits of the film). I still get an insane amount of pleasure from "The Phoney King of England," "Love" still makes me a little misty, and if you can sit through "Not In Nottingham" without feeling some sort of emotion for the characters and their struggles, well, my friend, you have no heart.

All in all, don't go into this looking for a masterpiece, but if you go in looking for some adventure and some laughs, I think you'll have a good time.

4) The Three Caballeros (1944)

This one has a soft-spot for me because it was one of my dad's favorite Disney films; in fact, we bought him a copy on our only trip to Disney World, and I remember watching it with him when we got home.

It's one of the Disney package films, a series of vignettes strung together by a loose story. The story in this one is that it's Donald Duck's birthday, and he receives a bunch of gifts from his friends in Latin America. Two of those friends, Jose Carioca & Panchito, come to visit him, and they take him on a trip through their homelands.

This film (and the film prior, Saludos Amigos) were commissioned by the US State Department as part of a goodwill mission with South America. The government feared the ties that some of the South American countries had with the Nazis, and so Disney was brought in to act as an ambassador.

Much of the film feels a bit like an exercise in experimentation as there is a lot of variation in the animation styles throughout the film. It's also one of the first films to blend live-action and animation, the first Disney film to do that being Saludos Amigos, and some of the techniques the studios learned here were put to use later in Song of the South.

Some of the segments are a tad forgettable, but there are a few that stand out for me, ones that I love to revisit time and again. The biggest one is the segment involving the Aracuan bird. The Aracuan is this wacky little bird that just runs around singing his song, popping in and out of the screen in highly mischievous and creative ways, and he has a tendency to annoy Donald.

Another of my favorites is The Flying Gauchito. This adorable little story is about a little boy from Uruguay and his adventures with a flying donkey he finds. He tries to use the donkey to win a racing contest, but it doesn't exactly work out for the best. One of the things I love the most about this story is how the narrator (who is the little boy as an adult) interacts with the story, like when he instructs the boy to cut the rope binding the donkey's wings at one point. It's a great little animated tale.

And no discussion of this film would be complete without talking about the title song. It's manic, psychedelic and unexpected. It's so unlike anything Disney was doing in the 1940s. It's a highly sing-a-longable song, and I never fail to laugh at the predicaments Donald goes through in this scene (like when his fellow Caballeros can make a guitar appear out of thin air, and he can only make every other musical instrument except a guitar appear).

3) The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)Ah, one of the most contentious ones on my list! This one garnered a lot of wrath because the book got "Disneyfied" in its translation to film. I'm going to confess that I haven't gotten around to reading the original book yet, but that aside, I feel that this is an excellent film for many reasons.

First and foremost is Tom Hulce's (best known for playing Mozart in Amadeus) nuanced and touching portrayal of Quasimodo. He makes him an intelligent young man who is searching for who he really is and what he wants out of life, and you truly feel for him in his scenes with Frollo & Esmerelda. I think one of the best examples of this can be found in the Sanctuary scene. He takes you through an entire journey of emotion in just a couple of short minutes, and it always leaves me teary.

On the other side, we have the brilliant Tony Jay as Quasimodo's "master," Judge Claude Frollo.
Jay was one of those actors where you know his voice, but you probably didn't know his name. He did a metric ton of voice work over the years; some of his better known roles are Monsieur D'Arque (the man who ran the insane asylum) in Beauty & the Beast, Chairface Chippendale on The Tick, and Megabyte on ReBoot.

In HOND, he created one of the most memorable Disney villains ever. His Frollo is a supposed man of God, but he mentally torments poor Quasimodo by keeping him imprisoned in the bell tower and by treating him as a child. Not only that, but he openly lusts after Esmerelda, even while he strives to kill her and her Gypsy people. He's truly terrifying as he quotes the Bible while wielding a sword over the heads of Quasimodo and Esmerelda.

Also superb in this movie is the animation (although parts of it haven't held up so well) and the music. The downside of the animation can be seen in the crowd scenes; it was one of the first films to widely use computer animation, but, sadly, it hasn't held up so well. At the time of release, it was pretty astonishing to see such large crowds (like during "Topsy Turvy" or the Sanctuary scene) and to know that each one was moving independent of the rest, but you can pretty easily see that they only had a handful of models that they used multiple, multiple times.

Other than that, though, the animation is beautiful. One only needs to see the Sanctuary scene for that or Quasimodo's song "Out There." They used a lot of fantastic, cinematic camera work in those scenes, great pans of the city as a whole that swoop down to focus on a character. I always find it rather awe-inspiring. Oh, and I cannot forget to mention the opening segment, "The Bells of Notre Dame." It's one of those scenes I don't get tired of. The song is the character Clopin telling about how Frollo came to be the one to raise Quasimodo, and it constantly cuts between him in the present and the tale he's telling. One of the most brilliant moments is the line, "Stop! cried the Archdeacon." The animation cuts from the Archdeacon with a flash to Clopin, and it's just kind of an arresting moment (you can see this at about 3:48):

And the music. It doesn't matter how many times I watch this film, the opening bell-tolling with the Latin chanting just gives me goosebumps every single time. I do admit that I'm not terribly fond of the song "Topsy Turvy," but "God Help the Outcasts" is hauntingly beautiful, and "The Court of Miracles" is just a delight, so wicked and fun. Overall, it's just a great film that deserves more credit than it gets.

2) Hercules (1997)

The last two films on this list have a lot of common although they are completely different genres. We'll start with the broad comedy, Hercules.

As you can tell by the title, this is a retelling of the classic Greek myth of Hercules (yes, I do know that Hercules is the Roman name for Heracles, but Disney does insist in the movie and in the later TV show that he was Greek, so we're going with that). We have musical narration provided by the Muses (featuring some of the best Broadway voices ever, like Lillias White & La Chanze), we have a sympathetic hero in the form of Herc, but the one thing most people remember about this film is his villain, Hades, Lord of the Underworld, perfectly brought to life by James Woods.

Woods' performance was incredible. Watching Hades is so much like watching Woods himself, and I remember reading back when the film came out that the animators had a lot of trouble animating Hades because Woods so often gave his line deliveries so fast. Nevertheless, he creates a manic, outrageous and memorable villain, a great foil for the "Wonder Boy," Hercules.

One reason I like this film so much is the art direction. It was a completely unique take for Disney, an area they hadn't gone before. I love how the character design is reminiscent of the old Greek and Roman, and the colors they used were amazing. I also love watching Hades and Phil because they look so much like their voice actors (James Woods & Danny DeVito respectively).

But the big reason I love this film is Susan Egan's performance as Megara. Egan, for those not familiar with her, originated the role of Belle in Disney's Beauty & the Beast on Broadway. She has one of the most beautiful voices I've ever heard, and she puts it to good work in her showstopper, "I Won't Say." She also shows a brilliant mastery of comic timing with her line deliveries, and she gave us something not really seen before: a strong Disney female.

Yes, we had had a few of them before then (the prime one being Belle), but no Disney female before or possibly since could stand up to Meg in my book. She's a woman who knows what she wants out of life, and she'll do just about anything to get it. When she tells Hercules, "I'm a big tough girl.", you believe her. She's independent, and she doesn't need Hercules to make her life whole. Actually, when she thinks she might be falling in love with her, she doesn't want it, and when we reach the end of the film, you see it's actually Herc who needs Meg. She's just a great character, and she completely makes the film for me.

1) Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

Another unique path for Disney. This one was their first sci-fi animated film (and, sadly, pretty much the last, unless you count Treasure Planet, which was a mix of sci-fi & historical styles), and I think it gets a bum rap far too often. It's not a perfect film by any means, but I was so happy to see Disney try something daring and new. It's a shame that audiences didn't take to it so well.

The film follows a linguist (voiced by Michael J. Fox) who finds a book in his grandfather's belongings which seems to be a guide for finding the lost city of Atlantis. He, with the help of one of his grandfather's old friends, puts together a ragtag group of adventurers to seek out Atlantis, but things begin to go a little topsy-turvy.

One of the strongest elements of this film is the design, which came from comic artist Mike Mignola (best known for his Hellboy series). Every character has a striking and unique design, and there is such an angularity to the architecture in Atlantis. You can definitely see Mignola's influence everywhere.

The other strong point to this movie, the one that brings me back to it time and again, are the characters. Disney took what could have just been a melange of cliches, but they made it into something fun and unexpected. The team that Milo hires is comprised of a people of various races and backgrounds. You've got a French guy, an Italian man, a young Hispanic girl from the Bronx, and an African American man. You might think on first glance that you've just got a win for Politically Correct Bingo, but you'd be wrong. They put a nice spin on each of the characters. Audrey, for example, is the team's mechanic, even though she's just a teenager (and her sister is a champion boxer). Sweet, the doctor, is half-African American, half-Native American. Mole, the Frenchman, is just disturbing. Really, you have to see him. He's a just a creepy little guy who loves to dig.

And Vinnie. . I love Vinnie. I think he's probably my favorite character in the film, other than Milo. He's voiced by Don Novello, best known for his character Father Guido Sarducci, and he's just hilarious. Everything he says is so dry, and he's probably the one character who's the least like he seems he should be. He's the munitions expert with a passion for blowing stuff up, but his ultimate dream in life is to own a little flower shop. He's just great.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this little exploration of the underrated side of Disney. I had fun putting it together, even if it took me longer than I expected. I'd love to hear your thoughts on either Disney films in general or my list in specific, so feel free to leave me a comment.

2009-10-03T19:03:00.003-05:00

Happy Saturday, all. Just a head's up that there won't be a real new post today. I was out of the house much of the day at Toy Story 1 & 2 in 3D (more about that tomorrow), and I'm fighting with a bug again. Tomorrow, I'll try to get two posts to you, but I will definitely have a post about the Toy Story double feature and my Top 5 Underrated Disney Animated Films. Sorry about the lack of postage, but I hope you enjoy tomorrow's post(s).

"I'm a trickster by nature, but I'm not violent."

2009-10-02T12:37:00.021-05:00

Hey, happy Friday! Today's title comes from Jack, and he's one of the central stars in today's issue of Fables, number 2, The (Un)Usual Suspects. We'll be picking up right where we left off earlier, so if you've just started following (*wave*), go back through the tags & read that post before coming back here.

This issue opens on The Woodland, the City Hall of Fabletown. We get a little glimpse of Snow White entering the building before the story shifts to what Willingham calls "the Woodland's smallest studio apartment," the home of Bigby Wolf.

Bigby has an unexpected and unwanted guest, one of the three little pigs, who shouldn't even be in Fabletown as all animal Fables are supposed to be up on the Farm. Bigby and the pig have a little battle of words which gives you a lot of their history and enmity in a short, short time. Bigby kind of gets the last word, however.

From there, we get to see how much of a cad Prince Charming really is. Really, I can't describe this well enough, so here's that page.

Snow White & Bigby have a conversation in the Woodland's garden about the search for Rose Red and her attacker. He reveals that he doesn't really think Jack is the perp, but he does believe Jack is guilty of some other crimes, and this gives him the perfect opportunity to hold him.

Bigby runs down the list of current suspects with Snow. He doesn't think Jack did it, he doesn't think it was one of the mundys Rose liked to hang out with (a mundy is normal people, non-Fables), and, surprisingly, Snow is one of his suspects. She and Rose had been estranged for a number of years. That's all the info we get from him for now as to why he's got Snow on his list.

Next is a lovely little scene where we get properly introduced to Cinderella and Bluebeard. He's teaching her how to fence, and we quickly see that this is not the Cinderella we got from Disney. For starters, she's got a rather filthy mouth, and she can defend herself pretty readily.

Snow has a little dinner date with her ex, Prince Charming, and he hasn't come just out of the kindness of his heart. He wants Snow to help him auction his title and lands on an internet auction site. He's broke, and he figures this is the perfect time of the year to try and auction it all off because the Rememberence Day celebrations are approaching (Rememberence Day is a Fable holiday where they remember the last ship that escaped the Adversary and those who stayed behind to ensure its safe escape). Snow tells Charming that she won't help him because he had an affair with Rose, and she says that he belongs on the list of suspects.

Next, we get to see Bigby in his element as he interrogates Jack. Snow is present for this interrogation as she wants to be right where the information is on her sister's disapperance. These pages are largely exposition, setting up some plot points to come. We learn that Rose & Jack had been involved for the past four years, but not continuously. They had a big old public fight a year prior, and after that, Rose got involved with Bluebeard. Jack says that she only dated Bluebeard to make him jealous and that he should be the one Bigby is questioning, and Bigby says that they will get around to Bluebeard.

Bigby confronts Jack about some of his previous schemes to make money (like using the seven league boots to win the Boston Marathon), and Jack gets highly defensive and starts calling Bigby names. Snow tearfully interrupts the pair.

Snow asks Jack if he's stashed Rose's body somewhere, which he promises he didn't. Bigby says that he's going to keep Jack in his current jail cell while he searches his apartment, and before they leave, Rose asks Jack if there is anyone he can think of who would want to hurt Rose.

Next up, Snow & Bigby travel to question Bluebeard. He thinks that they are there to collect his annual donation he gives to the Fabletown government, but Bigby just jumps right into the thick of it. He tosses the crimescene photos onto Bluebeard's desk and asks him point-blank why he killed Rose. I'm going to just share the rest of this investigation scene because it's too incredible to try to describe.

Well, that's a lot of info to end with! If Jack didn't hurt Rose & Bluebeard didn't hurt Rose, then who did?

I'm not 100% sure if I'll have a post for you tomorrow, but, hey, I made it Monday-Friday with a blog post every day! That's got to count for something, doesn't it?

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

2009-10-01T08:42:00.008-05:00

Hi gang. I'm going to try something a little bit different today, partially because I like to shake things up and partially because I'm still under the weather.

Today, I'm going to talk a little about movies, specifically, the Top 5 Movies That Scared Me as Kid. I was lucky enough to grow up in a golden age of kids movies, the 1980s. Back then, scares and frights and creepy stuff were a staple of kids movies, and I think that's something that's really missing from movies today.

We didn't grow up to be fucked up because of these films (okay, maybe a little bit), but they served a great purpose: they showed us that life isn't always going to be peaches and cream, that you have to face real challenges to life, you may come out changed, but you WILL get through the bad times. Today, fare for kids (with a few notable exceptions, and I might touch on one or two of those) is pretty damn squeaky clean. You can't dare to scare kids today; their poor precious psyches just can't take it!

Well, I say screw that! If I ever have kids, I'm gonna bring them up on the awesome and twisted films that I grew up with, and it's not going to kill them. Okay, enough of the ranting, on with the fun! Like all my lists, this is in no particular order.

5) The Wizard of Oz

Yep, the classic that has been messing with kids' heads since 1939! This was one of the earliest movies I ever saw, and it's still one of my favorites. For me, the scares largely came in the form of The Wicked Witch of the West, brilliantly played by Margaret Hamilton. I had the luck to see this movie on the big screen (the first time on the big screen for me!) a week ago yesterday, and the scene that always scared me still made me uneasy. It's when Dorothy is in the Witch's castle, and the Witch has left her alone with her crystal ball and the knowledge that she'll be killed in an hour if she can't get the ruby slippers off. When Dorothy is viewing the crystal ball, and her Aunt Em morphs into the Witch, who mercilessly mocks Dorothy, I still get chills. Hell, up until a few years ago, I couldn't even watch that part without covering my eyes! It's a stunning and incredibly image, to see one's beloved foster-parent shift into the evil that is hunting them. **shudder**

4) The Last UnicornAnd that image right there is one of the big ones who scared me: The Red Bull. This movie is about a unicorn who hears from some passing hunters that she's the last unicorn in the world, and so she sets out to find her missing brethren. She finds some traveling companions on the way, and through their journey, they find that an old, rather evil king named Haggard has had the Red Bull drive all the unicorns into the ocean near his castle so that he can view them any time he wants. The scenes where the unicorn confronts the Bull, especially the first scene, are just amazingly intense, and the bull's roar doesn't help matters any!

But as bad as those scenes are, they are NOTHING compared to the scenes of the harpy and Mommy Fortuna's traveling circus. Mommy Fortuna, scarily voiced by Angela Lansbury, is this withered old crone who captures the unicorn and adds her to her strange collection of mythical beasts. The unicorn and the harpy are the only members of this troupe who are the genuine article; the rest are all common animals that Mommy Fortuna has cast a spell upon to make them look like the real deal to the gullible public (like using a tired old lion as a manticore).

With the help of Schmendrick, the magician, the unicorn is able to escape from her cage, but she cannot leave without freeing the harpy. Once freed, the harpy begins to attack the unicorn, but Mommy Fortuna returns to gloat, shouting that they couldn't have freed themselves alone, that she helped them. That garners the harpy's attention, and she swoops down upon Mommy Fortuna, ripping her to shreds, feeding on her. It's a dark, dark scene, and I've always had to turn my head on that one (noticing a theme here? Yeah, I am a wuss, thanks for asking.)

3)The Goonies Okay, mostly lightweight scares here. In case you haven't seen it, The Goonies is a film about a bunch of kids whose families are about to be forced to move from their suburb so a golf course can be built there. The kids find what looks like a treasure map in the attic of the main kid, Mikey (played by Sean Astin), and they set out to find the treasure, in the hopes it can save their homes.

The first stop on the map is this run-down old restaurant, but bad news for the kids, a gang of criminals, Mama Fratelli & her sons, are staying in the place. The kids manage to escape & find their way down into the tunnels below the building, but one of the boys, Chunk, gets left behind in the freezer with a dead corpse. If that wasn't nightmare fuel inducing enough, the Fratellis find him and try to extract info from him about the map and the treasure. Mama Fratelli's mode of information gathering is singularly horrible and wicked: she slaps a blender on the table & threatens that she's gonna stick Chunk's hand in the blender if he doesn't spill his guts.

The other scene that made me a little jumpy as a kid is later on. I always found it to be an awesome scene, but it made me nervous. Along the trail of the map, the kids come into this room with a giant pipe organ made out of human bones. Yeeek. When they translate the Spanish map clues, they find that they have to play the song that is written on the map to proceed, but because of an accident earlier, part of the notes are burned and smudged. The other bad news is that wrong notes cause sections of the floor to drop out, and the Fratellis are closing in on them fast. It's a fast-paced, intense scene, and I think it may actually be my favorite scene in the whole movie now.

2) Return to Oz Okay, this one is a liiiiittle bit of a cheat because I didn't actually get to see the movie until I was an adult (only because we could never find it in our area; believe me, I made my parents look HARD!), but I had the graphic novel adaptation of the movie, so it was pretty close to seeing it.

This movie is a prime example of dark, fucked-up 80s kids films. Where to start with it? Okay, how about the fact that Dorothy gets taken to an insane asylum because her aunt and uncle think something is seriously wrong with her because she talks about her adventures in Oz? No? Well, what about the Wheelers? That's a hell of a lot of nightmare fuel there!

The Wheelers are kind of what they sound like: they're these guys with incredibly long limbs who have wheels on their feet, and they're the first enemy Dorothy meets in Oz.

The other big scares come from the main villains of the piece, though: Princess Mombi and the Nome King.

Mombi gets the worst scares in my book. She captures Dorothy and puts her in a tower, intending to take her head. See, Mombi has a collection of magically spelled heads, and she can change them at will, just like we'd change clothing. When Dorothy escapes the tower and steals Mombi's Powder of Life, she accidentally wakes one of the heads, and they all start screaming her name at the same time as Mombi's headless body comes searching for her. It's damn frightening, even for me now at 32!

1) The NeverEnding Story
*sigh* One of my most beloved films as a kid, and it still holds up well for me now. But man, are there some scary scenes in this sucker!

Okay, I'm gonna talk about the scary characters before I hit on the main scene that petrified me as a kid. There are so many characters in this movie who can induce frights, and they're not even all bad or scary folks. The first one who always frightened me was Morla, the Ancient One. She (? I was never sure as a kid or even now) is this giant turtle living in the Swamps of Sadness, and she's incredibly, incredibly cranky. I guess I would be cranky if I was sneezing every few minutes, but she shows so much animosity towards Atreyu. That's why I include her on this list.

I know some people find the Rock Biter (he's the one directly to our right of the girl in the middle of the poster) to be frightening, but he always just kind of made me sad. He never scared me; I just kind of wanted to cuddle him, especially towards the end of the movie.

Next, the wolf, Gmork. He was sent with a mission: to kill Atreyu and keep him from succeeding on his quest. You really only see glimpses of him until nearly the climax of the film, but his glowing eyes were frightening, and when he finally meets Atreyu in a cave and they learn who the other is. . ugh!

My final one isn't really a character as such, but you can't talk about this movie without mentioning the Nothing. The Nothing is the force sweeping through world of Fantasia, and it has caused the Childlike Empress to become deathly sick. Atreyu's quest is to find a way to defeat the Nothing & cure the Childlike Empress. But how can you defeat something that has no body? The Nothing is this black entity flowing through Fantasia, and anything it touches, it disappears, like it never even existed. People, places, animals, plants, everything. . . poof. That's such a scary thought, something that can make you disappear as though you were never even there.

And now, the scene that scared the pants off of me, and it still makes me jump. On his quest, Atreyu gets directed to the Southern Oracle by Morla; however, it won't be a simple trip to visit the Oracle as it is guarded by two giant sphinxes. These sphinxes can see into your heart, and if they see any uncertainty there, any sign that you are not firmly on your quest's path, their eyes open and emit this beam that chars you.

Atreyu goes headlong along the path to the Oracle, against the advice of the gnomes who helped him previously. As he walks towards the sphinxes, he spies the remains of a knight he had watched try to pass earlier. He slows his pace, becomes a little apprehensive, and as he nears, the face-guard of the knight's helmet flies open, showing his burned and charred face. *shiver* But it doesn't end there. Atreyu is now uncertain, and the sphinxes sense it; their eyes slowly begin to open the nearer he gets. I'm not going to completely spoil the scene in case you haven't seen the movie, but I'll just say it's a heart-pounding scene.

And there you have it! The five movies that scared me half to death as a kid. All things willing, we'll get back onto our schedule tomorrow, and I'll share issue #2 of Fables.

"Snikt me! Snikt me! SNIKT ME!!!"

2009-09-30T12:03:00.011-05:00

Yep, it's that time again! It's Wednesday, so that means that it's Wacky Wade Wednesday, the day where we celebrate all things Deadpool.

Today's post will be a little short on the length (I'm fighting with angry sinuses), but it will be full on the funny! First off, I'm gonna take you an excursion through Deadpool #0. This issue was a special, free issue that came with Wizard Magazine in 1998, and it contains some of the most incredible, hilarious Deadpool moments ever.

As the book opens, Wade is busy suspending a guy over his own Doberman dogs, drizzling BBQ sauce down the guy's face. Wade has come on a mission for his boss; he's come to retrieve the MacGuffin files (love that reference!), and the guy quickly gives in and tells Wade that they're in the bedroom safe.

Unfortunately for our maniac, the files have been stolen by Vamp-Animus. But what the heck? Deadpool killed Vamp-Animus the year before, so how could he still be alive?

Wade hijacks a cab and follows VA to his lair, where he is working for Arnim Zola. Zola has a big old exposition segment where he reveals his ultimate plans. He has perfected cloning to the point where he can create life from one strand of DNA in hours, and he plans on creating what he calls "Corpse Corps" to be his footmen.

Zola sics Vamp-Animus on Wade, but he kills him again with one shot, so Zola unleashes his dread army of dead losers.

The next few pages are absolute gold, and I wish I could share every single one of them with you. Wade is really in his element, and he just rips through all of the clones, dispatching them with ease and with a witty quip.

He seems to have eliminated most of the clones, and Wade finds two beds covered with sheets. What he finds there is one of the most frightening images Marvel have ever given us:

(That's Spider-Man's Aunt May & Uncle Ben, for those not in the know) Wade continues his maniacal fun, and it doesn't take long before he's killed every single clone in the building and has Zola pinned to the ground, Wade's giant gun aimed at his face. Being a coward, Zola makes a deal with Deadpool to save his life. Deadpool's a little apprehensive at first, but he's reeeaaaally happy with the deal he ends up with:

And now, just a couple of little items to end this romp, all from the pages of 1998's Baby's First Deadpool Book. To start things off, here's a little lesson in etiquette from Captain America & Deadpool!
And, last but not least, a few lessons in our ABCs.

And that's gonna wrap things up for today. Tomorrow's a freebie day, so I'm not sure yet what will be covered. I'm thinking about starting a walk-through of the DC miniseries Kingdom Come. If I don't go with that, I think I'll cover issue #1 of Astro City.

"I am always Jean Grey and always the Phoenix."

2009-09-29T08:19:00.022-05:00

Hey there! Glad to see you came back for part 2 of this Phoenix story, What If? #33, What If. . . Phoenix Rose Again? If you missed part 1, well, scroll back up and read it or else this story won't make much sense.

But first, a little impromptu poll before I continue. How is this style of post working for you guys? Do you enjoy the full issue recaps, or do you prefer the smaller segments I've done, like the top Deadpool quotes & moments? Lemme know in the comments, if you would. I'd love some feedback.

This part of the story is a little different in that it's completely from the perspective of Phoenix. The narration is all first-person, and it really adds to the story and gives us a lot of insight into this version of Phoenix.

As the story begins, Phoenix is reviewing the previous issue's events in her mind before she decides to hunt for the Shadow King and rescue her daughter, Rachel. She uses her powers to locate the Shadow King, and she finds out that he is on Muir Island, home of Moira McTaggart (ex-lover of Professor Xavier)'s research facility.

Knowing how powerful the Shadow King is, Phoenix enters the facility warily, scanning for any sign of him, but she finds none; she does sense that something is blocking her scans, and she quickly finds out who that person is: her daughter, Rachel.

The Shadow King has used some of the facility's technology to rapidly age Rachel, which unleashes her mutant powers and which has also given the Phoenix Force to her because of her heritage. However, Rachel still has the mind of the infant she truly is; the Shadow King is using her as his puppet.

Phoenix fears using the full force of her powers because she doesn't want to harm Rachel, but the Shadow King forces her hand. Instead of fighting him in reality, she takes the battle to the Astral Plane where she can face him with the entirety of the Phoenix Force.

She just rips him to shreds, which returns Rachel to herself, only she's a baby in the body of an adult. Phoenix uses her powers to turn Rachel back a baby, and I've always found these panels to be really touching. Phoenix may be a cosmic entity, but she has absorbed some humanity and truly does love her child.

She and Rachel return home to the X-Mansion, and life goes on much as normal for the next eight years. Phoenix lives the life of Jean Grey, but she feels conflicted in living this lie, in hiding the truth from her family and friends. And like all good things, this too must come to an end: an anti-mutant candidate is elected President, and the Mutant Registration Act is passed in 1990. As usual, the X-Men plan to resist this law.

One night, Wolverine is returning to his room when he hears Rachel having a nightmare. I'm going to share this entire page because it encapsulates all the reasons I gave for loving Logan yesterday:

Logan being the experienced & pretty smart guy that he is realizes that Rachel's nightmare is more than just a dream. He knows something is up with Jean. And boy, is there!

Phoenix travels to the White House & uses her powers to mindwipe the President, making him more sympathetic towards mutants. Unfortunately, this was a horrible move because someone assassinates him for his changed beliefs the next day.

Henry Peter Gyrich (an X-villain who also appears in our timeline's stories) pushes forward creation of the Mark V Sentinels. If you're not familiar with the Sentinels, they featured quite a bit back in the 80s and in more recent times. They are giant robots created just for eliminating mutants or superhumans, and they can read energy signatures to tell who is superpowered and who isn't.

The Sentinels begin eliminating superpowered threats. They not only kill many mutants, they also eliminate a lot of superheroes (a full-page panel shows the Sentinels hunting down Iron Man, Captain America, The Avengers, the Fantastic Four with a line of gravestones along the bottom of the page; they even killed Daredevil & the Hulk). The X-Men take refuge in the Mansion, but they know that their time is short.

Wolverine takes this time to confront "Jean." He knows that she is Phoenix, but she denies this is true. The next scene has always made me a little bit uncomfortable, and I'm gonna warn you now that it's a bit triggering.

He beats her to make her unleash the Phoenix, and it works perfectly. Now, I understand what he's doing here in his efforts, but I still don't like the idea of Logan beating a woman. Anyway, she fries him with her powers, but it doesn't do too much damage because of his healing ability.

Mid-kiss, Logan pops his claws into Phoenix's chest and vows to eliminate her because he's like her, a killer, but she can't control her bloodlust. He doesn't want to kill her, but he knows that one day she'll snap, and she could wipe out everything with her powers. He doesn't succeed. Phoenix catches him in the air with her telekinesis and wipes his memory.

Not the best move. Cyclops & Professor X have been outside of the room the entire time, and they've heard everything. Phoenix leaves, and she couldn't have picked a worse time to do that. The Sentinels strike once she leaves, decimating the X-Men. They manage to escape to an abandoned Sentinel base in the Adirondack, and as they are planning their next strike, they receive an unexpected visitor: Magneto.

Of course, Wolverine immediately wants to gut him, but Magneto has come in peace. He realizes how all mutantkind is on the brink and that they must bond together or be completely wiped out. They begin the next phase of their attack against the Sentinels.

The Sentinel base is in the Baxter Building, the once-home of the Fantastic Four, and the mutants make their way there through the old Morlock tunnels, with Magneto providing a magnetic field to shield them from the Sentinels, but the Sentinels use that magnetic field to find them.

Magneto attacks the Sentinels, but they counter him with a ray, breaking his back & paralyzing him (hmmm, that's familiar!). Just when it seems the X-Men are doomed, Dark Phoenix appears and just destroys the surrounding Sentinels.

The X-Men are afraid at first, but Phoenix informs them they have nothing to fear from her; she's just there for the Sentinels. And boy, is she! She uses her powers to explode the Baxter Building, wiping out a bunch of Sentinels in the process, but they soon surround her.

One of the Sentinels uses a scrambler on Phoenix, overwhelming her, and before they can terminate her, the X-Men attack to protect her. This whole next segment is very reminiscent of Days of Future Past, which, of course, is the intent.

The team hit & run the Sentinels, and they experience a loss straight away: Nightcrawler. He's always had a bit of a weak heart, and the strain of teleporting so many X-Men in is too much for him. Kitty Pryde comes to the rescue now. She phases herself and Colossus into the Baxter Building.

The loss of Kitty is great, but the destruction of Master Mold provides the mutants an opening. Phoenix completely unleashes her fiery powers upon the Sentinels, completely wiping them out.

The battle over, the X-Men return to their new base. Jean approaches Scott tentatively, but he shows her acceptance.

The precog mutant Destiny comes to speak to Phoenix, knowing Phoenix would request to speak with her. She asks Destiny what she sees in her future, and Destiny informs her that death is all she sees, unless Phoenix leaves. Phoenix already knew this was her future, and she leaves Earth to return to the stars, even though she wants to stay with her child and the man she loves.

*sigh* Bit of a downer, huh? I think it's time to liven things up with a little trip through a couple of my favorite panels from The Incredible Hercules.

If you aren't reading this book, you SHOULD be! It's probably the book I enjoy the most, month in and month out. It nicely blends action, drama and comedy in a way I haven't seen done ever.

Hercules has always kind of been thought of as the poor-man's Thor; like Thor, he's one of the few true gods in the Marvel universe, and he was also a member of the Avengers. He's a real womanizer and can be a bit of a cad, but he's incredibly lovable. I'm not going to go through his complete history, but if you're interested, you can read about it over here.

A couple of years ago, post the World War Hulk cross-over, Hercules inherited the Hulk's title when it became The Incredible Hercules. Herc joined forces with a young genius named Amadeus Cho, and after World War Hulk, the pair took off for fun and adventure.

First, The Incredible Hercules always contains the best, the greatest and the funniest recap page in any comic book. Here's an example from issue #123:
And one from the newest issue, #134:

One of the things I love the most about this book is how the sound effects so often echo what's going on in the story:

Earlier this year, Herc & Amadeus ran into some Amazons who kidnapped Amadeus because they wanted him to use his abilities to find an object of great power. Herc comes to rescue Amadeus, and he finds him with the Amazon leader, Artume, and, Herc being the rogue he is, thinks Cho's about to get a little action, so he has this now-classic response:

And that's a little introduction to The Incredible Hercules. Believe me, I've got more of him to share, but I don't want to give it all away in the first post. I'm gonna delay the pleasure. I think Herc would approve.

Tomorrow is Wacky Wade Wednesday, so there will be much Deadpool. I'm not 100% sure what yet, but whatever it winds up being, it'll be funny.

"I am fire and life incarnate! Now and forever -- I am Phoenix!"

2009-09-28T12:33:00.012-05:00

Well, another week, another Mutant Monday! And today, I'm going to be covering an alternate version of my favorite character, Jean Grey. The book in question is What If? #32, What If. . . Phoenix Had Not Died?

The What If? series really doesn't get enough love. It's one of my favorite series, and I've tried to get my hands on as many issues as I can find. In this series, Uatu the Watcher gives you a premise and then shows you what would have happened if events went another way. Not every issue is dark or has a sad ending, but a vast majority of them do. What can I say? I'm a sucker for the angst. And, boy, does this two-parter have angst in spades (I'll cover issue #33 tomorrow)!

Okay, quick recap (or as quick as possible) on Phoenix, for those unfamiliar with her/it. Jean Grey was a mutant who had telepathic/telekinetic powers. In a story from the early 80s, the X-Men were traveling in a shuttle craft through a solar flare, but the radiation began seeping through. One person had to stay at the controls while the rest remained in a shielded part of the craft; Jean used her telepathic powers on the ship's pilot to learn how to fly the craft, all while using the telekinetic portion of her abilities to keep the radiation out. She managed to save the X-Men, but not alone: the Phoenix Force heard her pain and offered to save her life, which she accepted.

The Phoenix took on Jean's form and placed her body in a cocoon on the ocean floor, and when she returned to the X-Men, they believed she had died and was resurrected by Phoenix, but it was just Phoenix becoming Jean.

They went through a lot of adventures with Phoenix, but the power became too uncontrollable for her. She was manipulated by Jason Wyngarde (Mastermind) and the Hellfire Club, she destroyed a planet full of broccoli people by consuming its sun (yeah, you heard me right; I might go into that part of it one day), and, finally, she was sentenced to death by the Shi'ar Empire (an alien race) in order to bring her madness to an end.

Jean/Phoenix had seemed to have her powers back under control by this time, but it wasn't enough for Lilandra, leader of the Shi'ar. The X-Men fought to save Jean by battling the Imperial Guard; Jean brought the battle to an end by committing suicide. She just couldn't stand the risk of Phoenix taking over her again and possibly dooming more people.

And that brings us to the beginning of this What If? issue. See, in this timeline, Jean was taken out early in the battle with the Imperial Guard, and instead of executing her, they performed a psychic lobotomy, removing all traces of her abilities and powers, making her just a normal human.

The X-Men return to Earth, and life goes on pretty much the same as in our timeline, except that Scott (Cyclops) and Jean marry and leave the team. Jean is plagued by nightmares of the horrible deeds she committed as Phoenix, which strains her relationship with Scott.

One night, they have a visitor to their home out on Martha's Vinyard (oh, yeah, purchased for them by Warren Worthington III, Angel): Magneto. He's come to take Jean up to Asteroid M and offer her a chance to have her powers back.

She nearly takes that offer, too. The X-Men come to the rescue, but it wouldn't be a Claremont-era X-Men comic without a some internal monologues (Claremont didn't write this book, but he was credited with plotting it):

And then we get this awesome image, a great homage to the cover of Giant X-Men #1:

Okay, back to Jean. She struggles with the allure of allowing the Phoenix Force to overtake her once more. She finally decides not to give in, and she begins destroying Magneto's energy chamber, and, Magneto being the evil dude he is, nearly strikes her in his anger. Hey, I'd be kind of pissed, too, if someone started bashing my electronic gizmos with a metal bat!

When Jean rants at Magneto and tells him how he could make the choice to become good, too, he turns away and says that his path was chosen years ago, and he lets the X-Men go.

They return to Earth once more, and things start returning to normal. They return to the X-Men, Scott as leader, Jean as a teacher for the younger New Mutants team. And they have a baby, little Rachel Summers (who, in our timeline [well, not really our timeline because she came to ours from another timeline; man, the Summers family tree really messes me up!] became a member of Excaliber in the 90s and a member of the X-Men in the 2000s). Life seems to be going really, really well for them. Which, of course, means that it's all about to go into the crapper.

Little Rachel wakes Jean up one night, crying horribly.

It turns out Jean may have been right about Rachel having powers; Scott enters the room, only it isn't Scott, it's Mastermind. He tries to manipulate Jean once more with his powers of illusion.

Ugh, that creeps me out so bad, especially the image of her covered in maggots!

But in typical convoluted fashion of the X-Men comics of this time period, he's not the only one trying to manipulate. Mastermind himself is being manipulated by the Shadow King, an old X-villain who once crippled Charles Xavier.

Jean tries to fight back, but Mastermind/Shadow King shoot her and steal Rachel; Shadow King has plans for Rachel, but he doesn't really explain those plans.

The shots kill Jean, and as her body lies cooling on the bedroom floor, Phoenix comes back and saves her life once more, but Jean fights back against Phoenix to no avail.

However, Phoenix finally realizes that she has been Jean this entire time. She was always Jean from the time she saved her on the shuttle craft and took on her form and psyche. This knowledge drives her over the edge, and she flies to the ocean where Jean's body lies in its cocoon.

She imagines how Scott will react to the truth that the woman he loves, the mother of his child, is a farce, and she believes that he will hate her for the lie. And she performs a horrible, unforgivable act:

And that is one hell of a cliffhanger. We'll continue with part 2 tomorrow, so come back for that!

In parting, I'll leave you with my top 5 X-Men list. Granted, this list is always subject to change, but these are my top 5 for the moment (and most of them are eternal top 5 members). They're not in any particular order, no method to my madness.

5) Wolverine: Okay, confession time - I have not always liked Wolverine. Phew! That feels good to get off of my chest! When I first got into comics & into X-Men comics specifically, I absolutely hated Wolverine. I thought he was completely over-used and over-exposed. I thought most people gave him more credit than he deserved, that he wasn't that great of a character. What changed my mind? Wolverine #75. It was the aftermath of the Fatal Attractions cross-over, and Logan was adjusting to life after having his adamantium ripped from his skeleton by Magneto. I may cover this issue soon, so I won't go all the way into it, but the clincher for me was the ending. His relationship with Jubilee showed me how much variety Wolverine COULD have when written well, and, for the most part, I've enjoyed him since. I like my Wolverine tough, ass-kicking with a side of gentleness for kids and ladies.

4) Nightcrawler: I've loved Kurt from the first time I saw him. He's Errol Flynn in fuzzy-blue-elf form. He's a bit of a throwback in that he believes in chivalry and loves to fence, but that's part of his charm. One of my all-time favorite images of Kurt is as a pirate. He's kind of been one both in the Excalibur series and in his 4 issue mini-series from the 80s. I don't know if I really care for his current incarnation (he became a priest a couple of years ago), but I do like that he's a man of strong faith, especially given the contradiction it creates with his nearly demonic appearance. If you want to read some really good Nightcrawler stories, search out Vol. 1 of Excalibur, especially through about issue #50. I'll definitely be covering some of those stories here, so keep an eye out for that!

3) Beast: Hmmmmm. . I'm detecting a pattern. Blue, fuzzy, sense of humor. . . I mostly prefer Hank from the 80s-90s; I'm not real keen on the current catlike Beast. Hank is one of my favorites because of his intelligence and his sense of humor. I also love the dichotomy he faced once his secondary mutation kicked in and he became beast-like: the intelligent man who looks like a monster.

2) Jean Grey: I like Jean because she's more than what she seems. For so many years, she was underestimated and underused, but then the Phoenix storyline hit, and the depth of her innate powers was revealed. Jean often gets relegated to second fiddle and usually doesn't get the respect she deserves (she was one of the founding X-Men for heaven's sake, and the first one Xavier recruited!), but when she's written well, she's amazing.

1)Magneto: The first and best X-villain. Like with so many X-Men characters, Magneto benefits best by great writing. He's such a great character: Erik was a child during World War II when he and his family were interred in concentration camps for being Jews, and he went through absolute hell there. Some of his origins have his powers first appearing while in the camps, but what is interesting about him to me is even though he went through this ordeal, he himself believes that mutants are superior to humans, and some of his statements over the years have been rather Hitleresque. One of the best Magneto stories is the Testament miniseries from last year; it shows his years in the concentration camps, and it's utterly heartbreaking. I definitely plan on covering it here.

So, there ya go. Come back tomorrow for part 2 of the Phoenix What If?, and I also plan on showing you a few panels from The Incredible Hercules.

"Happy happy, joy joy"

2009-09-21T12:47:00.014-05:00

Hey! Welcome to another Mutant Monday. I apologize in advance for the shortness of this post, but I have to go out of town today; however, I didn't want you to think I had forgotten about you.

Today, I'm going to talk a little bit about one of my all-time favorite issues of X-Factor, Vol. 1 #86, "X-Animation." Now, I would normally not talk about this because it was written by Peter David, and I'm not too happy with him these days, but I have to admit that he wrote some stellar issues of X-Factor & The Incredible Hulk, and, damn it, I want to talk about some of those issues! So I'm putting my personal frustration with him aside and forging ahead.

This issue was about a year into David's run; in 1991, the team switched from the original X-Factor (starring the original X-Men team of Cyclops, Jean Grey/Marvel Girl, Iceman, Beast & Angel) to an all-new team of seemingly mismatched mutants. Havok (Alex Summers, Cyclops' brother) was the team leader, Val Cooper was their government liaison, and the team was comprised of Multiple Man/Jamie Madrox, Polaris/Lorna Dane, Strong Guy/Guido Carosella, Quicksilver/Pietro Maximoff & Wolfsbane/Rahne Sinclair.

I'm probably one of the few, but I really love the original David run of X-Factor. I think I'm the only Strong Guy fan in the world, and David really nailed the proper balance of his boisterous humor overcompensating for the pain he carried, both physical pain from his mutant power & emotional pain stemming from his childhood on. I also love the relationship between Strong Guy & Multiple Man; they were a great team with complimentary humors.

One of the few parts of this run I didn't like was how he handled Wolfsbane & Havoc. It seems at times that David forgot that Rahne was still a teenager, and I often find the way she lusts after Havoc (like sitting on the foot of his bed & staring at him while he sleeps) really unnerving and creepy. I know that's kind of the point, but it still skeeves me out. David's having the same problem in his current X-Factor run with the relationship between Madrox & Layla Miller (but that's a whole 'nother can of worms for another day).

So, back to issue 87. The whole premise of this issue is that a psychologist (we don't see his identity until the end, and I'm not gonna spoil it) has been brought in by Val Cooper to help the team through their problems and to analyze them for her use. I probably won't talk about every team member's stories in this issue, but I do want to talk a little about Wolfsbane, and then really discuss the segments on Madrox, Strong Guy & Quicksilver.

You're probably wondering what the title of this post has to do with this issue. Well, the issue opens with a cute little parody of Ren & Stimpy as Rahne is telling the pysch about her dreams. She keeps having a recurring dream called the Rahne & Simpy Show, starring herself & Feral (a member of X-Force, and another wolf/cat type of mutant; it was always a little uncertain to me exactly what Feral was).

She's having all kinds of weird dreams, parodies of Wayne's World & of Rain Man, and the doctor thinks she's having these dreams because she's trying to find an identity to latch on to. They talk about her relationship with Havok & her foster-father, Reverend Craig. Rahne seems to have the most simple conversation with the psychologist, and the most pleasant one, too.

Next up, Magneto's baby boy, Quicksilver. Pietro's got a big old problem: he suffers from what his teammates call (behind his back, of course) PMS: Pietro Maximoff Syndrome. They think he's snooty and insufferable. And he is, don't get me wrong. But there's an explanation to his supreme bitchiness:

And now for the two who broke my heart, Strong Guy and Multiple Man. Guido's got his appointment with the good doctor first.

Because Guido had warned Rahne about psychologists (something she mentioned in her session), the doctor wants to know why Guido had seen so many guidance counselors while he was in school. He was picked on a lot because he was a nerd, always getting perfect grades, and in self-defense, he became the class clown.

However, it backfired on him when he began to do it more and more to impress a girl he liked: her boyfriend beat the living crap out of Guido after the girl he liked winked at him. When Guido regained consciousness, he saw everyone laughing at him, and so he snapped and began attacking the bully, only to have the bully and his friends attacking him. Not good timing. His mutant powers kicked in right then:

That was the moment when I fully fell in love with Guido. He just broke my heart. I had no idea all his jokes and clowning around was hiding such a horrible past (and I could relate with my own childhood experiences with bullies).

Finally, Multiple Man, Jamie Madrox. The doctor cuts him off at the pass, telling him to take off the joy buzzer he has in his hand, and he asks Jamie to participate in some word association:

He asks Jamie if he truly believes what he said or if he was just trying for a reaction, and Jamie replies that he's honestly not sure. He explains that he likes getting reactions out of people because it reminds him that he's alive and gets people to notice him:

In all honesty, I prefer this Madrox to the one who is currently in X-Factor. Jamie's really rather an ass in the current book, and he just doesn't ring as true to me as in these older issues. I might go further into this, once I reread the current books.

Anyway, back to the story. It ends with Val Cooper talking to the psychologist, to see what he found out. Instead of telling her his findings, he asks her for her impressions of the team:

Ah, Val, you always were incredibly dense and clueless. . .

So, that's the main gist of the story. I highly recommend searching out this issue. It's worth the effort, and I think you can get it for a pretty reasonable price from online comic stores (or your LCS).

Tomorrow. . . well, I don't have plans for tomorrow. If I get back home early enough, I'll get a post up for you guys about something. Maybe we'll go through a What If? issue.

Arrr, Avast!!!

2009-09-19T15:16:00.010-05:00

Today be Talk Like a Pirate Day, mateys! I been a bad captain; it be more than a week since I last put fingers to keyboard in this little den, so don't make me walk the plank! Aye. . .

Okay, that'll be enough of that. My brain can't take much more of it. So, in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, I'm bringing you the long-promised pirate post. Yay! (flails arms like Kermit the Frog)

First off, how cool is this cover?

Deadpool. . pirate Deadpool. Standing on a treasure chest. I don't even know what the context of this is in the issue (I've got the issue, but I haven't read it yet), but I already know it's made of complete and utter win.

And now for the main event of this post. Some of you may know about DC's Elseworlds line of comics. For those of you who don't, they work basically like Marvel's What If? series: they take the familiar characters we know and put them into different times or different situations to see what would happen. I have a great affinity for both Elseworlds & What If?, so you'll see both of them pop up here from time to time.

Today, it's an Elseworld story, the Detective Comics Annual from 1994 to be exact. What do you get when you combine Batman and pirates? You get absolute awesome! This is probably my hands-down favorite Elseworld story, and I'm going to show you a few of the reasons why. I'm not going to really spoil you on plot or anything because I want you to seek this incredible book out for yourself (Sorry for being a stickler on this one, but you really have to experience this book for yourself; those of you who are my buddies, you know how to get a hold of me if you'd like to "borrow" it.).

So, in this universe, Batman is an English noble who got tired of living the sweet life, so he dawned the mantle of the Bat, called himself Leatherwing & took sail on the oceans to attack the Spanish & the ships of the Pope for King James. Alfred is his first mate, and in this universe, he's an Italian fellow named Alfredo. Yeah, Robin is in here, too, but he's actually pretty damn awesome. I'll show you him momentarily.

What does this honorable rogue look like? Well, here you go:

He cuts a pretty damn dashing figure, doesn't he?

So, reason number one that I love this book: Leatherwing is a perfect gentleman, and one of his first acts, after he defeats the rival Spaniard in the picture above, is to free their captive, the Princess Quext'chala. Unfortunately for him, because he loans her a dress, they are considered married when Leatherwing returns her home to her father. Steep price for clothing loan, huh?

Okay, I know I just broke my own rule about not revealing plot, so I won't reveal any more of it. Instead, I'm going to show you the main players, as they are a large portion of why I love this issue and why you should read it.

Robin, a plucky orphan:

Alfredo:

Capitana Felina (aka Selina Kyle, Catwoman)

(I apologize for my sloppy editing of the word balloons on this one. I had to include this shot of her as I love this dress, but the dialogue would be spoilertastic.)

And, of course, who is the Big Bad in this issue? Who else? The Laughing Man, the Joker himself:

And there you have it! A brief (or not-so-brief) introduction on why you should seek out this issue and read it ASAP. I hope you have fun on this Talk Like a Pirate Day. Don't drink too much grog & don't get shanghai'd. I'm going to try my very, very best to get this blog back on track this week, and, health permitting, I hope to get some make-up posts up tomorrow, so look for that!

Now get out of here before I make ye walk the plank, you scurvy lot!

I always like suspecting Jack. He's been such a perpetual load in my pants since day one of the Exile.

2009-09-11T09:09:00.013-05:00

Today's title comes from Bigby Wolf of Fables, and that's going to be today's topic because it's Fables Friday! I deeply apologise for not posting anything yesterday. I've been fighting my allergies or a cold (can never tell for sure which it is this time of year), but I will post what I had planned for yesterday's post tomorrow.

Instead of covering issue 2 of Fables, I'm going to take a slight detour. I was going to give you my top 10 issue list, but there are so many storyarcs, it would be difficult to do that, so I'm going to give you my top 5 storyarc list (including the issue numbers so you can search them out, if you want). Next, I'm going to show you one of my favorite characters from Jack of Fables, Babe the Blue Ox (from Paul Bunyan fame), and then finally, I'm going to take you through a couple of stories from 1001 Nights of Snowfall, the mostly prose book that came out a couple of years back and which expands on the backstories of several of the main characters.

My Top 5 Fables Storyarcs (in no particular order) {Here be spoilers! but not too many} [Thanks to Wikipedia for helping with the issue numbers & for refreshing my memory]

5) Legends in Exile (issues 1-5): This is the one that started it all, and it's a fantastic introduction to the world of Fables. Rose Red has apparantly been murdered, and Bigby Wolf & Snow White must investigate her murder & keep Fabletown from being exposed to the Mundy world.

4) The Mean Seasons (issues 30-33): I know I said I wasn't putting these in any particular order, and I'm not, but I have to say that I think this is probably my favorite storyarc. Bigby & Snow White have become a couple by this time, and Snow gives birth to their children, who are shapeshifters between wolf & human forms. Because they're not fully human, Snow must relocate to the Farm, but the Animals of the Farm fear and hate Bigby, so he exiles himself. Snow ends up learning about Bigby's youth from his father, the North Wind, and Snow learns that one of her children is not exactly normal. It's a beautiful tale, and always makes me cry.

3) Arabian Nights (and Days) (issues 42-45): Sinbad brings a delegation of Arabian Fables to Fabletown to help form an alliance against the Adversary. This arc was nice because we finally got to see more than just the Anglo/European storybook characters in the Fables universe.

2) Jack Be Nimble (issues 34-35): Jack goes to Hollywood and sets up a film studio. I loved this because Jack is one of my favorite characters, and seeing him trying to get a film made of his fantastic exploits was a treat.

1) The Good Prince (issues issues 60 to 63 and 65 to 69): I believe this was the longest storyarc in the Fables history, and I think it's probably the best. We finally get to see more and learn more about Flycatcher. His backstory was revealed in 1001 Nights of Snowfall (he was the Frog Prince, and in times of extreme emotion, he would revert back to his froggy form; unfortunately, this happened when the Adversary's forces attacked his castle, and he was forced to watch his wife & daughters be brutally raped & murdered, all because he couldn't keep from changing back into his frog self), and in this story, we get to see him be the hero for once. He finally remembers his past and leads an assault against the Adversary's forces. It's a heart-wrenching and gorgeous story.

So, there you go. Five fantastic storyarcs (though, honestly, it was very hard to pick just five because I love the entire fun of Fables), and most of these you can find in trade now, if you don't want to buy the issues.

The Mind of Babe the Blue Ox

And now, a little levity. Jack of Fables was spun off of Fables a few years ago, after the Jack Be Nible storyline, and it has featured a lot more comedy and a regular series of revolving characters. One of these characters is Babe the Blue Ox. His pages always make me laugh my head off.

In the world of Fables, a character's notoriety in the Mundy world helps with their ability to recover from death, injuries, etc. For example, because Jack is SO well known (partially because he's nearly every Jack in every folk tale imaginable, partially because he's so well known because of Jack & the Beanstalk), he pretty much can't be killed.

On the other hand, Babe & Paul Bunyan have become less powerful because very few people nowadays know their tales. This affected Babe by shrinking him to about the size of a small dog. He relieves his boredom by creating these fantastical stories and situations in his head, and below are a few of my favorite of these pages. I hope you find them as funny as I do. Oh, and there will be no explanation about the issues because his pages never make sense in the context of the story. And I apologize, but you'll have to click the pics to get them to load at the right, readable size.

1001 Nights of Snowfall

This lovely books came out in 2006, and it's a great companion piece to the Fables comic series. It contains several self-contained stories that aren't necessary to read in order to understand the Fables series storyline, but it does add a little more flavor to the characters. As I said earlier, you learn more about the characters in many cases, and in a few, you're introduced to them for the first time.

These stories are interwoven in a prose piece that tells of Snow White visiting the Arabian fables in order to warn them about the coming Adversary and to broker an agreement between the Arabian kingdoms and Fabletown, but she finds herself taking the place of Scheherezade. She is forced to tell the Sultan a new story each night or else she'll be executed. The comic sections are these tales she spins.

Each section has a different artist, and each artist adds his or her own unique flair to the story being told. Some of the art isn't my favorite, but I'm going to show you a couple of pages from my favorite stories.

My first story is the first one Snow tells, and it's of her own past with Prince Charming, a story called The Fencing Lessons. We finally learn why Boy Blue told Beauty & the Beast way back in issue 1 of Fables, "But above all, when talking to the Deputy Mayor -- never mention the dwarves!"

I'm not going to spoil this story because it's a wonderful, wonderful story, but to give you a little info before showing you the art, before Snow & Charming married, he promised her that once they were married, she could have any wish she wanted fulfilled. Her wish was to having him teach her how to fence, and they have to go about this covertly since it's not proper for a woman to know how to fight. I think the art in this story is absolutely my favorite. Snow has never looked stronger nor more beautiful.

The last story I'm going to cover is one I alluded to earlier, about Prince Ambrose, also known as Flycatcher. Before this story was published, Flycatcher was pretty much just a comic foil and friend to Boy Blue; we would just see him as the janitor for the Fabletown government offices. This story tells of his past, the past he himself didn't remember until recently. I'm going to show two pages from this story. The first is adorable; the second is rather brutal (not gory, but just warning for triggering material & nudity).

And that's it for today. Tomorrow, I promise pirates. I'm holding to the Code this time!

"You look familiar, did I spin you like a beanie propeller and leave you in a motel room in Dubuque?"

2009-09-09T09:11:00.020-05:00

Today's title comes from the special guest of today's post, Deadpool! Yep, you asked for him, you got him (and I would have had a regular post about him anyway)!

Instead of just covering an issue of his series, I'm going to take a different tact with old Wade. First, I'm going to talk a bit about his past, and then I'm going to show some of my favorite Deadpool moments & give some of my favorite quotes.

The Past

(much thanks to this post on Wikipedia, which helped refresh my memory on Deadpool & helped me learn a few facts I didn't know)

Deadpool first appeared in 1991's New Mutants #98, and he was created by Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza. This is probably the only good thing Liefeld has done in his time. I'm really not a very big fan of him or his art, as you'll probably learn as we go along in this blog.

Deadpool was originally pretty much the Marvel universe's answer to DC's Deathstroke; his name is even a reference or a parody to Deathstroke's (Wade Wilson vs. Slade Wilson). Although he did crack wise some in his early appearances, he didn't become the wacky fellow we know today until the mid-90s; I feel that his second miniseries is the one that really solidified his character.

So, who is Deadpool? Well, known as the Merc with a Mouth, he's an assassin for hire who's known for his snappy wordplay. He is a member of the Weapon X program (best known for giving Wolverine his adamantium skeleton), and he owes his healing factor to them. Wade Wilson was dying of cancer when he chose to take part in the Weapon X program, believing they would cure his cancer; instead, he got the healing factor, and, unfortunately, tumors from his cancer all over his body. Good news is his healing factor keeps the tumors contained & the cancer from killing him; bad news is it's left him looking not unlike Freddy Krueger when his mask is removed.

Wade is also a little bit insane; there has been a lot of speculation on whether he was prior to the Weapon X treatments or if it came as a side effect of them, and I personally side with the latter. Now, as far as I know, they've never shown much of Wade prior to becoming Deadpool, so I'm not sure where I got that feeling from, but given the way the Weapon X treatments affected him and the way they sent the cancer tumors spreading through the rest of his body, it makes sense to me that possibly the tumors would have messed with his brain.

So, Deadpool lurked around various areas of the mutant and general Marvel universe before he wound up with his own title in 1997. My absolute favorite character from that book (aside from Wade, natch) was Blind Al. She was this crotchety old lady (think Aunt May crossed with Bea Arthur crossed with old Mama Fratelli from The Goonies) who was actually Deadpool's prisoner but wound up being kind of a mom to him. I'll be showing a little bit of her in a while, don't worry.

From there, he was paired up with Cable of all people. See, it's ironic because Deadpool's first hit waaaay back in New Mutants was supposed to be Cable & his team. Actually, this worked out pretty damn well; much better than I would have supposed, any way. They had kind of an Odd Couple bromance going on, and I really miss their interplay. I got into the book shortly before it was cancelled (seems to be the way things happen for me).

And that pretty much catches us up to the now. Deadpool is once again starring in his own solo title, written by Daniel Way, and he's also got a miniseries going on and soon, he's going to be getting his own team-up title, if what I've heard is accurate. I would love to see Wade paired up with Spider-Man (for reals, this time!) or maybe She-Hulk or Hercules (I've seen that this last one is actually going to happen, yay!).

Wade has always broken the fourth-wall and has been portrayed as realizing he's just in a comic, but now, he's kind of got a weird thing going. See, his thought boxes have always been portrayed as yellow boxes, but now he's also got a second internal voice, a more irrational one (not like the first one was terribly rational, but there you are), that is in white boxes. Some have speculated that this is his interpretation of Cable talking him through life, but I'm just not sure about that. Honestly, I'm not sure how to take the white boxes at all, but they make me laugh, and that's all I really care about in a Deadpool book.

Great Deadpool Quotes

(I apologize that I don't have the issue numbers for these.)

Weasel: What did you do with Agent X? (looks out the window) Oh, you spelled "Hi Weasel" with his intestines.

Deadpool: I knew you'd peek.

Deadpool: Speaking of games, you ever play Street Fighter?

Shadowcat: As if.

Deadpool: (uppercuts Kitty) SHORYUKEN!

Cable: Wade... only thing that can help me is your blood. Only thing that can help you is mine Deadpool: We're not gonna haveta kiss or anythin'... are we?

Deadpool: Well if it isn't Nathan Christopher Dayspring Askani'son Summers... or are you just calling yourself Priscilla now?

Deadpool: Hey. Naked Avengers painted on the side of the pool. This guy's a loser but he's my kind of loser. Where's Sue Richards...? Duh, Invisible.

Cable: It's a secondary hard drive that acts like a virus, which acts like a server.

Deadpool: Gesundheit.

A great example of Wade breaking the fourth wall:

Deadpool: I am not going back to any more alternate worlds! I mean, Days of Future Past was a classic and all, but it's really all been done to death now...

Sabretooth: Scream for me.

Deadpool: Okay how about this: OMG FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DONT KILL ME PLEASSSE!!
Sabretooth: Quiet!

Deadpool: I can say it with a girly tone if you want.

Deadpool: "Pwangg?" Trees don't go "Pwangg--" Llamas don't go "Pwangg--" Nothing found in nature goes "Pwangg", which means -- we're officially hip deep in the smelly stuff.

Deadpool: I've been besmirched! This besmirchment will not stand!

Deadpool: It's an angel of God. My glorious Bea Arthur--

Favorite Deadpool Moments

Ahh, the moment I've been waiting for! The chance to show you some of my favorite Wade moments, the stuff that made me laugh the hardest or hurt the most for him (yeah, there's at least one of those coming; I'm a sucker for the angst).

First, a couple of scans from Deadpool #11. In this issue, Wade & Blind Al get sent back through time, back into the time of Peter Parker/Spider-Man's teenage years. Wade ends up impersonating Peter & Blind Al, Aunt May.

This scan is from early in the issue, when Wade ends up with a little girl ripping him a new one:

From later in the issue when Blind Al tells Wade they have to be careful or they'll mess up the timeline:

And one more from this issue. Wade decides to use his image transformer to impersonate Peter Parker. Who should he chance running into?

Okay, now for a few more serious ones. These all came from issue 4 of the second Deadpool mini-series.

First, two scans that I think you all will see why I freaked out when I found them today:

These next two scans are why I've always shipped Deadpool & Siryn (then again, maybe the fact that her name is Theresa has something to do with it, lol):

*sniffle* I warned you guys there would be a little sappy stuff in here! Wish more writers would attempt the serious side of Wade from time to time.

Okay, back to the funny. This is from Deadpool #18, during a story arc where Cable gets deaged to an infant:
Baby Cable is so cute!

And, finally, some recent scans. First, from Deadpool #11. A little backstory on this: so, during the recent Skrull invasion, Deadpool was hired by Nick Fury to steal some Skrull data, but Norman Osborn (Green Goblin) intercepted the info, which caused him to be able to kill the Skrull Queen. Deadpool never got paid, which, of course, really pissed Wade off. He tried to take on Osborn's Thunderbolts and succeeded, stealing Osborn's credit cards as repayment. Ante upped once again. Osborn sent Bullseye/Hawkeye to kill Deadpool, and Wade ended up with an arrow in his head, courtesy of Bullseye, which leads into issues 11 & 12.

After his internal monologue uses haiku to warn him of Bullseye's impending attack:

Deadpool manages to defeat Bullseye by wearing a meat suit (yes, it's as wacky as it sounds, no, I'm not going to show you because you must see it for yourself!), and after a quick stint in the hospital, Bullseye returns to hunt Wade again. This time, he brought a rocket launcher:

And on that awesome note, I'll end our first Deadpool post. Hope you guys got as much of a kick out of it as I did putting it together. Return tomorrow for superheros & pirates (no, it's not what you think it is, sorry).

Random Ramblings (or Books You Should Be Reading)

2009-09-08T10:42:00.005-05:00

Happy Tuesday, everyone. I hope all of you who are returning to work, too, are having an easier time of it than I am. I haven't seen time creep by so slowly in a long, long time.

Today, I'm going to switch gears a little bit and talk about some books that everyone should read at least once in your life. It's going to be a hodgepodge of genres, but that's just the way I go. But first, I want to share this little gem I found over on ONTD:

This is something Twilight-related I can get behind, a crossover to span the ages! And no, other than this picture, you won't find any Twilight books in my post today (or ever!).

All right, the first book on my list is Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman. I try to reread this book at least once every year, and it never fails to make me laugh. If you thought a book about the Apocalpse & the son of Satan couldn't be funny, well, you thought wrong! Of course, given the authors, the book is distinctly British in tone & in humor, so it might not be for you if you don't get into that sort of humor. Me, I love it and can't get enough of it.

Next on my list is another classic, The Princess Bride by William Goldman. If you've only seen the film, you need to search out this book and read it. You get a lot more backstory on the not-so-main characters (such as Inigo & Fezzick), and it's really a delightful read. I need to take my own advice & reread it because I haven't read it since I was a kid.

Now for something a little more serious but still wonderful: The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan. You may know her as the author of The Joy Luck Club. I think I've read all of her books (with the possible exception of The Kitchen God's Wife), but this one is my hands-down favorite. It's the story of two adult sisters, Olivia and Kwan, told with many flashbacks.

Olivia's a young girl when her half-sister, Kwan, comes from China to live with her family, and she's initially very excited by this development, but she comes to find that Kwan isn't exactly the sister she's dreamed about. She's kind of embarassing to Olivia because she doesn't speak English well, and she seems to be crazy because she talks to ghosts and speaks of past lives. These stories will influence the course of Olivia's life and her relationship with Kwan, and Olivia may just learn that Kwan's not as crazy as she seems. It's a beautiful story, and it never fails to both spook me at times and bring me to tears.

And here's another serious book: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. History buffs, you'll enjoy this one. It takes place in the 12th century in England, and it's about the lives that swirl and intersect around the building of a cathedral in Kingsbridge. I try to reread this one about every year, too, though that can be difficult because of the length of this novel. Don't let the length scare you off, though; it's a very gripping story. I was hooked before I even got out of the prologue. How can you beat this opening? The book opens with a town readying for the execution of a man accused of thievery, and everyone is there, from the lowest peasant to the highest nobleman. However, just as sentence is being carried out, the man's girlfriend places a curse upon the three men presiding over this affair: a sherrif, a priest, and a knight. It's a stellar opening, and a fantastic book.

Okay, one more before I close my post for today. I would recommend the entire series, but honestly, it's hit and miss in terms of quality, so I'm just going to recommend the first book from the series: On a Pale Horse by Piers Anthony, book 1 of the Incarnations of Immortality series.

I first read this book probably a year or so before my dad passed away, and it really helped me get through that difficult time. The book is about a young man named Zane who is down on his luck. He's broke, he's luckless in love, and no matter his best intention, it all just crashes around him. He plans to commit suicide, and as he's about to pull the trigger, who should appear in his small apartment but Death? In his surprise & shock, he pulls the trigger on Death, killing him. He then learns from Fate that there are Incarnations, personifications of things such as death, fate, war, etc. which are just offices being held by mortals. Because he killed Death, Zane must now take his place & reap the souls of those who are in balance and unable to reach heaven or hell by their own accord.

It's a really good sci-fi/fantasy read, and Anthony also offers up a lot of interesting moral conundrums for us to ponder (an example of this is whether it is moral to keep the elderly alive by machines, even when they don't want to be).

So, there you go. There are five good books you ought to take a look at. Tomorrow, we get to delve into Deadpool, so I hope you come back for that. :-)

Happy Monday! (Or Not)

2009-09-07T14:31:00.008-05:00

It's Monday, the start of a fresh week, and my plan is to blog every day this week. Let's cross our fingers & hope I can achieve that!

So, I hope you guys here in the States are enjoying your holiday off, if you're getting it off, and for those of you elsewhere, I hope your day back is going well. :-)

Today, I'm kicking off Mutant Monday with a trip through X-Men #1. This series came out in 1991, written by Chris Clarement with art by Jim Lee. It was part of Marvel's relaunching of the X-Men titles, and it was a herald for all things that comics became in the 90s.

What do I mean by that? Well, issue 1 was released with multiple versions of the cover, which could be combined to become one big image. It was probably the first title to feature such a gimmicky cover, and gimmick covers became a staple of the 90s, especially in the X-Verse. Foil covers, holographic covers, variant covers, glow in the dark covers. You name them, they probably made them in the 90s.

Now, apart from the covers, the other things that were ushered in with the 90s were big, bombastic storylines, exaggerated bodies (you'll see some of that in a little bit), and pockets. I say the last somewhat in jest, but with artists like Rob Liefeld, you definitely get a ton of pockets & big weapons (but we'll get to that on Wednesday with Deadpool).

The late 80s-early 90s definitely brought about more cross-over stories. In just a short few years, we had the X-Tinction Agenda, X-Cutioner's Song, Fatal Attractions, Blood Ties (an Avengers/X-Men cross-over), The Phalanx Agenda, Age of Apocalypse, & Onslaught. I know there were more cross-overs after Onslaught, but that was where I dropped out of the X-books.

So where does that put us with X-Men #1? Where X-Men #1 picks up, the team is bringing everything back together. The Mansion has been rebuilt after being destroyed two years prior, the original X-Team (Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, Angel, Jean Grey/Marvel Girl) have rejoined the team after disbanding their team, X-Factor, and many of the costumes have been redesigned.

When the issue opens, a couple of spaceships are having a heated battle above Earth when they venture too close to Asteroid M. Big mistake. This is Magneto's home, now that he has left Earth in an attempt to have some peace. Obviously, he's rather irate at having his home disrupted. However, instead of killing the intruders, as the old Magneto might have done, he says he'll return them all to Earth, eliciting protests from one of the men.

This man is Fabian Cortez, leader of the Acolytes (a pseudo-cult who follow the teachings of Magneto), and he manages to talk Magneto into letting them stay. This may be a bad decision on the part of Erik, as we'll see through the first few story arcs.

Cut back to Earth, the X-Mansion. Now that the original X-Men have come back into the fold and there are many new team members, they're running a little simulation. They've split the members into two teams, and their goal is to infiltrate the Mansion & find and "capture" Professor Xavier (who has a little extra protection in the form of Jean Grey).

This whole sequence is probably one of my favorites out of any X-Men book. You get a lot of great banter between the characters, some nice action sequences, and you get to see Jean kicking a little butt. But my favorite moment of all time is below. To set this up, Gambit has managed to get through the fortifications, and, being the lusty Cajun that he is, kisses Jean after he's taken her down with some of his kinetic energy card blasts. Unfortunately for him, the Jean he just kissed is a robot who explodes on him. Cyclops starts to inform him that he's been disqualified, but he interrupts and replies, "I know, Cyclops. Je suis mort - I am now dead." (this was actually one of my pet peeves on this reread, the amount of stilted French Gambit uses; I guess I don't find it as charming as I did when I was 16)

So, back up in the control room, we get this little scene that still makes me crack up:

My friends and I must have laughed over and read through this scene so many times in high school. It's nice to see a little gentle ribbing coming from Scott; he's always so stiff & angsty throughout the X-books, and his character in this issue was a refreshing change from my memory of him.

Of course, Wolverine is the one who finally "tags" Professor X, and he gets a reaming out from Cyclops for putting his claws too close to Xavier's head. Just when I started lovin' you, Scott, you gotta be the big dick again.

And, so, the X-Men have to come to the rescue when Nick Fury contacts them about Magneto. Asteroid M is currently over Russia, which is making the Russians justifiably nervous, so they start searching for Magneto's energy signature. Xavier agrees to Scott's plan to split the team into two teams, the Gold & Blue teams.

Now we come into a little goof in Claremont's writing. We cut back to Asteroid M, where the humans and the Acolytes are fighting. One of the humans kills one of the Acolytes, AnneMarie (remember this!), and Cortez uses his influence to show Magneto that the leaders on Earth will react to his presence and that he needs to act accordingly.

The X-Men get a read on Magneto, and he's in Earth's atmosphere, raising an old Russian submarine, the Leningrad, which he sunk some years ago. He had tried to remove the threat of nuclear weapons from the world, but the Russians didn't take kindly to that and attacked him. He sunk the Leningrad, all hands on board, and now he's trying to take the warheads from the ship.

He and Rogue have a little talk while Cyclops tries to sneak-attack him with the team's new Blackbird plane, but it doesn't work. It only leads to more fighting between the X-Men and Magneto, which leads to one of the most chilling panels in the book

Things quickly fall apart. Wolverine slashes Magneto with his claws, Magneto tries to flee with the warheads, and Rogue tries to talk him down, only she gets pummeled by bullets from (I'm assuming?) a Russian aircraft. In order to save Rogue, he uses his magnetic powers to shoot her down to Genosha (an island with mutant refugees; not exactly the safest spot), and then he detonates one of the warheads to cover his escape back to Asteroid M.

Back on M, Cortez notices how badly Magneto is bleeding, and he offers to use his powers to heal him. Now, here comes Claremont's big mistake I alluded to earlier: Cortez mentions that his powers will save Magneto, "as they have my sister from the SHIELD Agent's weapon." The sister is AnneMarie, who died earlier in the issue. Buwha? She clearly died earlier, but I guess Claremont didn't want to kill her off yet, so he conveniently uses Cortez to save her. Okay . . .

The story now cuts down to Genosha where the Chief Magistrate is asking that Rogue help deal with a group of mutant terrorists who are working their way through the city. Unfortunately, they show up at the hospital as they're searching for Rogue. Yep, it's the Acolytes again. Rogue is quickly overpowered, but the rest of the X-Team show up to save the day. We get a big battle before Magneto shows up again, seemingly healed from his wounds, and he declares that Asteroid M is now a safe haven for any mutant who chooses to leave Earth, but he also declares that he will take any attack against any mutant as an attack against him. Tough guy.

The final two panels are a foreshadowing: We see Banshee walking in to talk to Moira MacTaggert in her lab, but she's weeping profusely. Sean asks her what's wrong, and she replies, "I dinna ken what could've possessed me. Lord my Lord, what have I done? This terrible thing that's happening. . . Banshee, it's al my fault!" Bum bum bum!!!!!

All in all, it was a pleasant read to revisit. My biggest complaints were the written out accents (like for Gambit, Moira & Sean) and the constant internal monologues that Claremont adores. Maybe it's because comics in recent years have gotten away from the internal monologues, but they really bothered me on this read. Here's an example from Psylocke attacking one of the Acolytes:

I don't mind an internal monologue in moderation, but it seems like every single page has one or more. Moderation, Claremont, moderation!

So, that was X-Men #1. I'm still not sure what's coming up for tomorrow, but on Wednesday, we'll tackle a Deadpool book. Much fourth-wall breaking to come!

Plans and Schemes

2009-09-04T08:42:00.003-05:00

Okay, so the first poll has closed, and it would appear that Deadpool & Watchmen are the winners by a landslide! *throws confetti around*

Here's the plan:

Mondays are going to be Mutant Monday, wherein I'll discuss an X-Men book. This might be a classic X-Men book, one of the ones from the 90's, one of Whedon's Astonishing X-Men or it might even be an X-Men themed What If? issue (I've got a ton of those, and I love them for their crackiness & alternate futureness).

Tuesdays & Thursdays will be free-for-all days where I'll talk about any little thing that flows into my head. Any book will be up for grabs here.

Wednesday will be Wacky Wade Wednesday. I'll discuss our favorite fourth-wall breaking mutant, Deadpool, here, most likely beginning with his mini-series from the 90s.

Friday will be Fables Friday. I'll continue with issue 2 of Fables next Friday (today's my birthday, gimme a break! ;-)).

I'm not 100% sure if I'll post on the weekend, but if I do, it'll be one of the other titles you guys voted for in my poll. Bone might be a good way to kick it off (and I need to reread it).

I didn't forget about Watchmen, either. How could I forget about my favorite red-haired vigilante? I'm going to do Watchmen as a special series, and I plan on going hard-core into it, which will require a lot of studying and rereading, so stay tuned for that.

Well, that's about all I have for today. I will kick this puppy off tomorrow properly. I apologize for all the delays in posting, but if you follow me on Twitter, you know it's been a crazy couple of weeks in the real world for me. I may be back later today with another Peter Pan post. I've been falling into that book some more, and the differences between it and the films that have been adapted from the book are amazing (and a little heartbreaking, to tell the truth).

Beginnings (or How I Lost My Heart to Jean Grey)

2009-08-31T17:50:00.000-05:00

First, a little news:

As you may have heard, it was announced today that Disney has bought Marvel for $4 billion (story on CNN over here). I have very, very mixed feelings on this. I have a great amount of love for both companies, but I do not want them mixing. There is a part of me, no matter my loyalty to Disney, that feels that Disney may try to control what Marvel is publishing. I don't want that to happen. I don't want Disney dictating the level of violence that can be used, the amount of cursing, etc. I know it's premature to worry about that, but the thought is in my head.

On the plus side, maybe this means we'll see more of the Gargoyles & Haunted Mansion titles. I've never seen either title in my LCS, but maybe they'll become more prominent. Perhaps we'll see more Disney properties become comics (I'd be up for a Kingdom Heart book, though Square/Enix would have to have a say in that, I suppose).

In any event, it's going to make for an interesting week of podcasts among the comic world, and hopefully, it will be a positive thing for both companies. I'll be sure to bring the latest whenever it's announced.

And now, back to your previously scheduled blogging. . .

So, you might be wondering what got me into comics in the first place. Well, as a kid, my parents bought me a pack of the old Star Comics imprint from Marvel. I don't completely remember what titles were in it, but I do remember it containing a Muppet Babies book & an ALF book (don't look at me that way! It was the 80s!). I also had a couple of film-to-graphic novel adaptations, one for The Secret of NIMH and one for Return to Oz. I wish I knew whatever happened to them.

After that, it was a long time before I officially got into mainstream comics; it didn't happen until my teen years. It was a compilation of my friend Donna and my uncle who got me into comics. My uncle had been collecting comics for a while, and I kind of remember picking up some of them and flipping through them while he was at work.

Donna was into the X-Men books, and after I started watching the 90s X-Men cartoon (again, thanks to my uncle), I started borrowing her books, and then I snookered my mom into buying them for me.

Back then, the X-Men titles were the only books I read. The first storyline I really read was X-Cutioner's Song, the big convoluted crossover among all the X-books that dealt with Stryfe (Cable's clone), the Legacy Virus, & Professor Xavier nearly dying after being attacked by Stryfe. I remember getting these polybagged copies of it at Wal-Mart; it was a pain to find them all, but I did, and after that, I was hooked.

I stayed with the X-titles until around the Onslaught saga; it just seemed too much like jumping the shark for me, and I hated what they were doing to Wolverine at the time (this was post-Fatal Attractions, where he lost his adamantium thanks to Magneto, and he was going feral; I think his nose actually ran away from his face out of frustration with the bastardization of his character).

See, look! His nose ran away!

I didn't get back into comics until about 2002, 2003. I decided to give X-Men another chance, and I stuck with it until a couple of months ago. I did like some of what they've done in the last few years; money and other situations led me to dropping all of my X-books.

However, I've expanded to other books. Fables and Jack of Fables are probably my favorite titles that I buy every month, closely followed by The Incredible Hercules & Deadpool. I ended up with Hercules as a fluke; I had been buying The Incredible Hulk when the Planet Hulk series ended & they shifted from Hulk to Herc. I was just going to give it a little trial, but it quickly won me over. I'll try to show you why you should be reading it in upcoming posts.

I've been a fan of Deadpool since the 90s. I never got to read his initial appearance in New Mutants, but I've loved him from the first time I saw him in X-Force. I love his manic energy, his breaking of the fourth wall, and his love for Bea Arthur (and of Siryn, though that seems to be stuck in the past and not gonna happen again). You'll see some of him in this blog, too.

Other than those books, the other ones I'm picking up regularly are Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Astro City. I like the former, but it's kind of hit and miss; I love the latter, but I'll love it more once Busiek gets back to the regular title instead of the Dark Ages miniseries currently going on.

A Blast From the Past

Do any of you remember this little cartoon?

I used to have the VHS for this, and I watched it quite a bit. I still remember the damn theme song. Just try to get it out of your head! Try! I need to sit down and watch the whole thing and see if it's like I remember.

Stuff You Should Be Reading

Now, I know I haven't talked about my love for the Bat, but I do have a lot of love for Batman, even though I'm largely a Marvel girl. My love probably began with The Animated Series, but I love the books as well, though I don't read them often.

This, however, is my personal canon:

Bat's in the Cradle by *The-BlackCat on deviant ART

This is the work of Black Cat, and you should go to her deviantArt page and read all of her stuff. Seriously, it's the best (or nearly best, from the buzz I'm hearing on Batman & Robin) Batman comic around these days. She'll melt your heart with the adorable and make you laugh your ass off as well. Not an easy task.

So, that's a little background on my passion for comics. Up next is a post on Fables #1, and later this week, we'll start the X-Men posts. Hope you enjoy the ride!

Fables #1 - Chapter One: Old Tales Revisited

2009-08-31T14:03:00.000-05:00

So, this week, I'm going to kick off our comic venture with one of my all-time favorite books, Fables. I first got exposed to this book via Wizard Magazine, and I was hooked from the start. I've always had a great love and passion for folk tales and fairy tales, so this just hit the spot for me.

This issue of Fables was written by Bill Willingham(creator & writer of the series; you may know him from a few Vertigo books or from his 2004-2006 run on Robin) with art by Lan Medina & Steve Leialoha.

Now, this is the first time I've done something like this, so I'm not 100% sure how far I should go with spoilers, at least with these older issues (I'll definitely avoid them or put up spoiler tags for the newer issues, but that's a ways away yet), so please let me know if you think I'm giving away too much of the story.

Our story opens in the only way a book about fables could: "Once upon a time. In a fictional land called New York City." Yep, we're not in the old fairy tale world, we're in Manhattan, following a cab speeding through the streets. We see the driver being berated for going too slowly by his passenger, and the cab pulls up to the corner of Bullfinch Street and Kipling Street, home of The Woodland Luxury Apartments, home to the well-to-do fables & the Fabletown government.

Let me back up just a smidgen, though. Those street names are part of the reason why I love Willingham and this book. He named them after two prominent writers, one of whom you probably got, Kipling for Rudyard Kipling, author of The Jungle Book, Gunga Din, Kim, and many other pieces of work. The Bullfinch is for Thomas Bulfinch, author of Bulfinch's Mythology, a series on mythology and legend. I thought it was especially fitting for this book as the first volume of his work is called The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes.

Alright, back to our story. A young man leaps out of the cab, leaving only a $.25 tip, and he barrels into the Woodland Luxury Apartment. We find out that this fellow is Jack. He's heading upstairs to the office of one B. Wolf, Head of Fabletown Security. Yep, Bigby Wolf, otherwise known as the Big Bad Wolf who terrorized the three little pigs, is head of security.

He looks like he's stepped out of a Bogart film or a Mickey Spillane novel; his office is sparse apart from his trench coat hanging on a hat rack, coffee maker on the sidebar, file cabinet and a cork board covered with notes behind his desk.

Bigby and Jack (who we find is Jack from Jack & the Beanstalk; in later issues, we also find he's pretty much every Jack from every fairy tale & story every written) exchange some verbal spars before Jack tells Bigby that there's been a terrible crime.

Cut to the Business Office of S. White. Snow White has got her hands full this morning, dealing with the marital problems of Beauty & the Beast. It seems whenever they fight, his curse comes back and he starts turning all beasty again. This makes for horrible problems for the Fabletown community, as Snow tells the couple, and she informs them that if he can't get his problem under control or if he can't purchase an appearance concealing glamour from one of the witches, they'll be shipped up north to the farm where all nonhuman fables live.

Through the exposition of this scene, Willingham gives us a lot of crucial info to digest in a matter of a couple of pages. The fables all escaped from some Big Bad called the Adversary; the majority of them only escaped with their lives, leaving their fortunes behind. They manage to live in their little community in the middle of Manhattan by segregating the nonhuman fables from the human fables. And, in one of my favorite moments, we find that although King Cole is the Mayor of Fabletown, Snow is the one who really runs things. Cole glad hands and is the face of the Fabletown government, but as soon as its him and Snow, he always defers to her opinion in all matters. Not exactly the Snow White we're used to from the Disney film, and that's why I love it.

Oh, and one more thing about Snow: never mention the dwarves. We don't find out why in this issue, but in the stand-alone book, 1001 Nights of Snowfall, we do learn the full story. I may post some pages from that, if there's an interest.

We get briefly introduced to Prince Charming, Snow White's ex-husband, and he's pretty much everything you'd expect from a fairy tale prince. He's all flirt and flair, but he's kind of hit rough times. As Snow says, "Apparently, he managed to finally wear out his welcome among even the most inbred elements of European royalty."

And then the story goes back to Bigby. He has some bad news for Snow: her sister, Rose Red, is missing and has possibly been attacked. That's the reason Jack came to the offices; he's her boyfriend, and he found her apartment in a mess with blood everywhere (As an aside, reason #2 that I love Willingham so much is he remembered Rose Red; so many versions of the Snow White story leave her out, and this actually comes into play in the book).

Of course, Snow is greatly upset when she sees Rose's apartment. There's hardly a spot that isn't covered in blood, and written on the wall in blood are the words "No more happily ever after." It doesn't look good for either Fabletown or for Rose.

Bigby instructs Jack to keep Snow out of the apartment, telling him to remove her physically if he has to, and, of course & justifiably, Snow doesn't appreciate that. Bigby investigates the apartment, and in a drawer, he finds a hinge and lock that fit onto the holes he found on the freezer door in the kitchen. We don't know why, but this piece of evidence leads him to arresting Jack. Jack, being the ass he is, tries to fight back, but of course Bigby overpowers him, nonplussed. The issue ends with Snow asking, "Is he the one?" and Bigby replying, "We'll see."

Willingham takes all these stories and the tropes associated with them, and turns them onto their ear. I love how he takes these one-dimensional characters like Snow White & the Big Bad Wolf and makes them into fully-fledged characters that we can relate to. I truly feel the characters are the strongest point to Fables. Yes, the stories are amazing, but I come back for the characters. I know a lot of people feel that Fables is not as strong of a book now as it was when it debuted in 2002, but I just don't feel that way. I can't see myself dropping this book for anything.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this exploration of the first issue of Fables. Please leave me any thoughts or ideas of how I could improve this (I'm just winging it right now until I find my groove), and I'd love to hear any ideas you have for this blog. I'm still working out a schedule of what I'm going to cover each day, and, hopefully, I'll get more into the swing of things shortly, and there will be daily posts.

Off to Neverland!

2009-08-27T11:33:00.000-05:00

I'm going to take a brief diversion from my planned route for this blog and talk a little books.

Yesterday, I started rereading J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. I haven't read this book since I was a kid, but the story of Peter and the Darling children has always been a part of my life. It was my dad's favorite book & favorite Disney movie; he always said he was going to be like Peter & never grow up, and he didn't. He always kept that spark of childhood in him, and I try to do the same.

Okay, back to the book. I'm really surprised by how different it is from the films, both the Disney animated film and the live-action one from a few years ago. I'm also really surprised by some of Barrie's phrasing. Part of my surprise is that this is supposed to be a book for kids, and it really doesn't read as one, and the rest of the surprise is at how odd some sentences read. Let me give an example. This takes place early in the book, after Mrs. Darling sees Peter for the first time. Peter leaps out the bedroom window, and Nana, the nursemaid dog, shuts the window, cutting off Peter's shadow.

But unfortunately Mrs. Darling could not leave it hanging out at the window, it looked so much like washing and lowered the whole tone of the house. She thought of showing it to Mr. Darling, but he was totting up winter great-coats for John and Michael with a wet towel round his head to keep his brain clear, and it seemed such a shame to trouble him; besides, she knew exactly what he would say: "It all comes of having a dog for a nurse."

That image of Mr. Darling with a towel round his head while he's doing bookwork just hits me so strangely. I'm really looking forward to seeing what else I've forgotten over the years since my last read, and I'm also interested in seeing how things like Tiger Lily and the Indians read to me now as an adult.

In other news, Episode 5 of World Peace Through Jackie Earle Haley is out, and you can find it on iTunes or wptjeh.com. We were all really upset at the news that Shutter Island has been moved back to February 19, 2010, and the episode is full of our thoughts, angry rants and theories for the pushback.

And I'm just gonna drop this here. I promise that a comic oriented post will be coming soon! It's been a crazy week, and I'm going to be out of town on Saturday all day, but I will get a comic post made before next week.

Welcome!

2009-08-25T11:28:00.001-05:00

Hi there! Welcome to my little corner of the blogosphere. My name is Theresa, and I'm gonna be your host on this crazy ride.

First, I feel I ought to explain the title. The title is a reference to Rorschach from Watchmen; it spun out of a joke between me and my friends, the lovely gals with whom I do the podcast World Peace Through Jackie Earle Haley. If you're interested in checking out that podcast, you can find it on iTunes or you can get it through our site, wptjeh.com. Not to be self-serving, I really can't recommend it enough. We have a lot of fun making it, and our discussions about Jackie & his films are really quite interesting.

Well, who am I? I'm a 31 year old self-described geek. I love all things movies & comics, I spend a lot of my time reading, I love to play video games (currently re-addicted to World of Warcraft & loving my undead rogue), and I love discussing all of these things with other people. That leads to this blog.

My main design for this blog is to cover one or two comic books at a time and for us to work our way through them, issue by issue. I hope to analyze them, to discuss how characters have changed over the years (this will be especially prevalent in one of my first titles I plan on covering, X-Men), and I generally want to celebrate the craft of comics.

I will also be featuring interesting movies, people you should know, blogs you should be reading, podcasts you should listen to, and all kinds of other stuff, basically whatever piques my interest.

So, I hope you stick around for the ride. I think it will be a lot of fun, and I hope you find it so, too. BTW, I'm not done yet with setting up the layout here, so changes will be forthcoming.